COL8A2 and Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy: We, therefore, sought to test whether knockdown of mutant COL8A2 could offer a new therapeutic strategy for early-onset FECD, establishing a precedent for treating gain-of-function genetic disorders in post-mitotic cells by tissue-specific ablation of the missense gene, targeting the start codon with CRISPR/Cas9.