New RNA interference technique can silence up to five genes
Since the 1998 discovery of RNA interference — the naturally
occurring phenomenon in which the flow of genetic information
from a cell's nucleus to the protein-building machinery of the
cell is disrupted — scientists have been pursuing the
tantalizing ability to shut off any gene in the body.
Specifically, they have been trying to silence malfunctioning
genes that cause diseases such as cancer. The new delivery
method, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, is orders of magnitude more effective than previous
methods, says Daniel Anderson, senior author of the paper and a
biomedical engineer at the David H. Koch Institute for
Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. “This greatly improved
efficacy allows us to dramatically decrease the dose levels, and
also opens the door to formulations that can simultaneously
inhibit multiple genes or pathways,” says Anderson. The key to
success with RNA interference is finding a safe and effec