Cancer often involves mutant genes that promote uncontrolled cell growth. In the last few years, researchers have silenced more than a dozen known cancer-causing genes with RNAi. Yet, once again, most of this success has been with cell cultures in the lab, and delivery poses the key hurdle in moving from the lab to the bedside of patients. Researchers are just beginning, for instance, to sort through how RNAi therapies might reach and penetrate tumors.
Rather than take a leading role, some RNAi therapies may help defeat cancers by supporting chemotherapy. Drug resistance is a major problem in chemotherapy, thwarting between 20 and 50 percent of all current treatments. In many of these failures, the guilty agent is a protein called P-glycoprotein. Like a misguided housekeeper, this protein sweeps drugs out of diseased cells. In 2004, a team of scientists at Imperial College London showed that RNAi can stop production of the protein in multidrug-resistant leukemia cells, restoring their sensitivity to existing drugs.
RNAi also provides a powerful new way for scientists to discover and learn more about genes that trigger or inhibit cancer. Greg Hannon and his group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory are part of an effort to decipher the function of 15,000 genes in a variety of human cancer cell lines. Such efforts might pinpoint genes never before linked to cancer and generate novel ideas for treatments.
Citation:
Xhu, G. (2014, April 10). RNAi. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/probe/doc/TechRnai.shtml
Rather than take a leading role, some RNAi therapies may help defeat cancers by supporting chemotherapy. Drug resistance is a major problem in chemotherapy, thwarting between 20 and 50 percent of all current treatments. In many of these failures, the guilty agent is a protein called P-glycoprotein. Like a misguided housekeeper, this protein sweeps drugs out of diseased cells. In 2004, a team of scientists at Imperial College London showed that RNAi can stop production of the protein in multidrug-resistant leukemia cells, restoring their sensitivity to existing drugs.
RNAi also provides a powerful new way for scientists to discover and learn more about genes that trigger or inhibit cancer. Greg Hannon and his group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory are part of an effort to decipher the function of 15,000 genes in a variety of human cancer cell lines. Such efforts might pinpoint genes never before linked to cancer and generate novel ideas for treatments.
Citation:
Xhu, G. (2014, April 10). RNAi. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/probe/doc/TechRnai.shtml