RNA interference: Promising approach for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment

Abstract

Today, cancer is one of the main health‐related challenges, and in the meantime, breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common cancers among women, with an alarming number of incidences and deaths every year. For this reason, the discovery of novel and more effective approaches for the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of the disease are very important. In this regard, scientists are looking for diagnostic molecules to achieve the above‐mentioned goals with higher accuracy and specificity. RNA interference (RNAi) is a posttranslational regulatory process mediated by microRNA intervention and small interfering RNAs. After transcription and edition, these two noncoding RNAs are integrated and activated with the RNA‐induced silencing complex (RISC) and AGO2 to connect the target mRNA by their complementary sequence and suppress their translation, thus reducing the expression of their target genes. These two RNAi categories show different patterns in different BC types and stages compared to healthy cells, and hence, these molecules have high diagnostic, monitoring, and therapeutic potentials. This article aims to review the RNAi pathway and diagnostic and therapeutic potentials with a special focus on BC.

What is the role of microbial biotechnology and genetic engineering in medicine?

“…One interesting biotherapeutic option for cancer treatment is the use of engineered bacteria to produce specific small interfering RNAs (siRNA) that target specific oncogenes. RNA‐interference (RNAi) is a potent mechanism of gene expression regulation, conserved from plants to humans, which holds promise for gene‐targeted therapies by specific silencing the genes of interest (Allahyari et al, 2023 ). Although the mechanism of RNAi does not occur in bacteria, it has been demonstrated that systemic gene silencing can be achieved in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans when the animal ingests an E. coli engineered strain with the ability to produce a specific siRNA (Timmons & Fire, 1998 ).…”

From mechanism to therapy: the journey of CD24 in cancer

“…RNA interference has been proposed as a potential treatment strategy for cancer (296,297). The use of a liposomal system to deliver CD24 shRNA (short hairpin RNA) has shown to be very promising in decreasing the expression of CD24 both in vitro and in vivo (194).…”

Omics-Based Investigations of Breast Cancer

“…Both GWAS and transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) have been also performed for the identification of the novel loci associated with mammographic density phenotypes [ 54 ] and for the characterization of the multiple signaling pathways associated with BC development in women of Asian and European descent [ 55 ]. RNA intereference (RNAi) pathway/gene silencing-based studies aim to correlate the RNAi categories, such as microRNA (miRNA) and small interfering RNAs (siRNA), to different BC types and stages in comparison to healthy cells, emphasizing their high diagnostic, monitoring, and therapeutic potentials [ 56 ]. Thus, the post-translational regulatory process, mediated by miRNA and siRNAs, which prevents gene expression in cancer, as well as in other diseases [ 57 ], is widely involved in the elucidation of gene function [ 58 ].…”