Ten Years of CRISPRing Cancers In Vitro

SIMPLE SUMMARY: There are several ways to mimic cancer cells features, one of those being permanently editing their DNA. Even though cancer cells alone cannot represent the whole complexity that develops around them in their surroundings, their modification, characterization and employment in rather simplified tests constitutes a fundamental step prior to contextualize them in living models, such as mice, both to comply with the 3Rs rule, and to optimize the in vivo works. On such notes, this review aims to highlight all the processes and discoveries with a long-term intention to make cancers more curable. ABSTRACT: Cell lines have always constituted a good investigation tool for cancer research, allowing scientists to understand the basic mechanisms underlying the complex network of phenomena peculiar to the transforming path from a healthy to cancerous cell. The introduction of CRISPR in everyday laboratory activity and its relative affordability greatly expanded the bench lab weaponry in the daily attempt to better understand tumor biology with the final aim to mitigate cancer’s impact in our lives. In this review, we aim to report how this genome editing technique affected in the in vitro modeling of different aspects of tumor biology, its several declinations, and analyze the advantages and drawbacks of each of them.