Putting the next generation of medicines on pharmacy shelves hinges on an
intensive search for ways of safely and effectively delivering a silencing message
to genes that are at the basis of innumerable diseases. That's the gist of an
article about the status of drug development based on RNA interference - nature's
gene-silencing mechanism - in the Sept. 7 issue of Chemical
+ Engineering News (C+EN), ACS's weekly newsmagazine.
In the cover story, C&EN Senior Editor Lisa M. Jarvis explains that cells
use it to control the activity of genes. Cells naturally use strands of material
called silent interfering RNA, or siRNA, to reroute the instructions for making
proteins so they never get made. For years, scientists have been excited by
the idea of using siRNA as drugs, introducing it to patients to turn off production
of disease-causing proteins. They initially thought that they could simply inject
bits of siRNA into patients and knock down diseases.
Jarvis describes a growing realization that to get inside cells siRNA would
need to hitch a ride. To date, the delivery vehicles of choice wrap siRNA inside
a tiny bubble of lipids, polymers, or other materials. But those vehicles can
reach only so many places, and they aren't so good at unloading their
genetic passengers. The article details a range of efforts underway in the pharmaceutical
industry and academic labs to develop new and better siRNA delivery technologies.
Posted September 9th, 2009
