{"title":"siRNAs and Viruses: The good, the Bad and the Way Forward.","authors":"Cassandra Soobramoney, Raveen Parboosing","doi":"10.2174/1874467214666210420113427","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>There are no available antivirals for many viruses or strains, while current antivirals are limited by toxicity and drug resistance. Therefore, alternative strategies, such as RNA interference (RNAi) are required. RNAi suppresses gene expression of any mRNA, making it an attractive candidate for antiviral therapeutics. Studies have evaluated siRNAs in a range of viruses, with some showing promising results. However, issues with stability and delivery of siRNAs remain. These issues may be minimized by modifying the siRNA structure, using an efficient delivery vector and targeting multiple regions of a virus's genome in a single dose. Finding these solutions could accelerate the progress of RNAi-based antivirals. This review highlights selected examples of antiviral siRNAs, limitations of RNAi and strategies to overcome these limitations.</p>","PeriodicalId":10865,"journal":{"name":"Current molecular pharmacology","volume":"15 1","pages":"143-158"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Current molecular pharmacology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2174/1874467214666210420113427","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
There are no available antivirals for many viruses or strains, while current antivirals are limited by toxicity and drug resistance. Therefore, alternative strategies, such as RNA interference (RNAi) are required. RNAi suppresses gene expression of any mRNA, making it an attractive candidate for antiviral therapeutics. Studies have evaluated siRNAs in a range of viruses, with some showing promising results. However, issues with stability and delivery of siRNAs remain. These issues may be minimized by modifying the siRNA structure, using an efficient delivery vector and targeting multiple regions of a virus's genome in a single dose. Finding these solutions could accelerate the progress of RNAi-based antivirals. This review highlights selected examples of antiviral siRNAs, limitations of RNAi and strategies to overcome these limitations.
期刊介绍:
Current Molecular Pharmacology aims to publish the latest developments in cellular and molecular pharmacology with a major emphasis on the mechanism of action of novel drugs under development, innovative pharmacological technologies, cell signaling, transduction pathway analysis, genomics, proteomics, and metabonomics applications to drug action. An additional focus will be the way in which normal biological function is illuminated by knowledge of the action of drugs at the cellular and molecular level. The journal publishes full-length/mini reviews, original research articles and thematic issues on molecular pharmacology.
Current Molecular Pharmacology is an essential journal for every scientist who is involved in drug design and discovery, target identification, target validation, preclinical and clinical development of drugs therapeutically useful in human disease.