Does CRISPR-Cas9 treatment cause DNA damage in cancer cells?

Many standard chemo and radio cancer therapies kill cancer cells by causing high levels of DNA damage. Unfortunately, they also cause damage to some normal cells which is why many of these drugs have unpleasant side effects. We have observed that CRISPR-Cas9 treatment of cancer cells de-stabilizes chromosomes causing changes in the number, loss of large and small fragments, and rearrangements. These changes have not been observed at the same level in normal cell types.

We would like to explore this in detail and work out whether and how CRISPR-Cas9 can be used to kill cancer cells without affecting normal cells. We plan to combine CRISPR. We plan to treat colorectal cancer cells which already have unstable chromosomes with different levels of CRISPR-Cas9, either alone or in combination with chemotherapy drugs or radiation treatment. We will compare their survival with normal cells and investigate the levels of DNA damage and chromosome instability in detail. We hope that this research could uncover new possibilities for the development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a cancer therapy.