RNA-based therapies

Targeting the pro-death and pro-survival functions of autophagy as novel therapeutic strategies in cancer

“…This technology holds promise as a therapeutic intervention and in functional studies involving the targeted silencing of genes in cancer cells 50. The function of these genes can be studied by transfecting cancer cells with a double-stranded siRNA targeting each gene and assessing a variety of end points, such as cell death, proliferation or certain phenotypes, following silencing of the gene.…”

Prolonged gene silencing by siRNA/chitosan-g-deoxycholic acid polyplexes loaded within biodegradable polymer nanoparticles

“…In the RNAi process, double stranded small interfering RNA (siRNA) with 19-23 base pair nucleotides is associated with a protein to an RNA-induced silencing complex, and recognizes the complementary target messenger RNA leading to its degradation [3,4]. Since the first report on siRNA as a potential therapeutic agent in 1998, significant efforts have been made to realize the practical utility of siRNA to treat incurable chronic and genetic diseases [2,[5][6][7][8][9][10]. However, clinical application of siRNA therapeutics is very challenging mainly because of the absence of delivery carriers suitable for stabilization and efficient intracellular delivery of siRNA [4,7].…”

Clustered patterns of species origins of nature-derived drugs and clues for future bioprospecting

“…Following the seminal works on nature-derived drugs (1, 2), we included in our analysis biologics, natural products and their semisynthetic derivatives, mimics, and peptidomimetics. Biologics include peptides (34), recombinant proteins (35), and monoclonal antibodies (36) except for RNA-based drugs (37). The inclusion or exclusion of biologics and RNA-based drugs had limited effect on our analysis because they primarily are of human or viral origin.…”