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治疗性RNAi的严肃思考

RNAi Therapeutics: How Likely, How Soon?

plos biology Volume 2 | Issue 1 | January 2004
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Unanswered Questions

Even assuming delivery problems can be solved, other questions remain, including that of whether therapeutic levels of RNAi may be toxic. Mahanthappa says, “The conservative answer is we just don't know. The more aggressive answer is there's no reason to think so.” Rossi isn't so sure. “The target of interest may be in normal cells as well as cancer cells,” he says. “That's where you get toxicity.”

But if small RNAs can be delivered to target cells efficiently and without significant toxicity, will they be effective medicines? Usman of Sirna is confident they will be. “If you can get it there, and if it's in one piece, there no doubt in our minds that it will work,” he says. To date, numerous experiments in animal models suggest RNAi can downregulate a variety of target genes effectively. However, there are still two unanswered questions about whether that will translate into effective therapy.

The first is whether RNAi's exquisite specificity is really an advantage beyond the bench. “It's unclear whether highly specific drugs give you a big therapeutic effect,” says Cy Stein. For instance, he says, “most active antitumor medicines have multiple mechanisms of action. The more specific you make it, the less robust the therapeutic activity is likely to be.” Rossi agrees: “Overspecificity has never worked,” he says.

The second question is what effect an excess of RNA from outside the cell will have on the normal function of the RISC, the complex at the heart of the RNAi mechanism. The number of RISCs in the cell is unknown, and one concern is that the amount of RNA needed to have a therapeutic effect may occupy all the available complexes. “We are usurping a natural cell system that is there for some other purpose, for knocking out endogenous gene function,” says Rossi. With the introduction of foreign RNA, will the system continue to perform its normal function as well, or will it become saturated? “That's the big black box in the field,” he says.

Looking Ahead to the Clinic

Despite the questions and unsolved problems, Sirna, Alnylam, and several other companies are moving ahead to develop RNAi therapy; indeed, some outstanding questions are probably only likely to be answered in the process of therapeutic development. The first applications are likely to be in cancer (targeting out-of-control oncogenes) or viral infection (targeting viral genes). To avoid some of the problems of delivery, initial trials may deliver the RNA by direct injection into the target tissue (for a tumor, for instance) or ex vivo, treating white blood cells infected with HIV, for example.

Having spent a decade trying to develop ribozymes, says Usman, Sirna is prepared for the rough road it faces. “We haven't solved all the problems, but we know how to proceed to work through them. It's no surprise to us—we've seen this movie before.” Usman expects Sirna to file an Investigational New Drug Application with the FDA by the end of 2004 and to have a human clinical trial in progress in 2005. “Without a doubt, there will be an RNAi-based drug within ten years,” Usman predicts.

Stein isn't so sure and thinks that too much is still to be learned about RNAi and the body's reaction to it to be confident that RNA-based therapies will ultimately be successful. “The whole field was founded on the belief it was rational, but there are huge gaps in our knowledge, and so you need a bit of luck to be successful,” he says. “I think people are surprised at how complicated it is, but why should it be any other way? It's an intellectual conceit to think that nature is simple.”

http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0020028 Nature is complex,but also simple! when we know its laws, maybe we will made a good relationship between nature and human.As gene therapy, Despite delivered RNAi to target cells and other unsolved problems, I hold the same idea as Usman's : there will be an RNAi-based drug within ten years. But but there are huge gaps in our cognition to know the complicated fact.
yxiangmind wrote:
there will be an RNAi-based drug within ten years 每一项新技术的研发和利用都会经过一个过程,如果这项技术真的有实用价值,经得起考验,它早晚会为医学事业的发展做出贡献的。 每一项新技术的研发和利用都会经过一个过程,如果这项技术真的有实用价值,经得起考验,它早晚会为医学事业的发展做出贡献的。 [标签:content1][标签:content2]

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作者:admin@医学,生命科学    2011-04-26 17:11
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