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Silence is golden

Nature Biotechnology volume 24, pages 306–308 (2006)Cite this article

In 2002, Rossi's group at City of Hope Beckman Research Institute (Duarte, CA, USA) described, for the first time, the use of RNAi against HIV in human cells. In transfected cells, a plasmid designed to produce small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) inhibited the expression of HIV DNA by four orders of magnitude1. Another paper in the same issue of Nature Biotechnology showed that intracellular gene expression could be targeted by siRNAs produced from plasmid DNA2.

The following year, Mark Kay, a Stanford pediatrician and geneticist, showed that RNAi could inhibit viral replication in an animal model3. Kay and colleagues used one plasmid to introduce genes from the hepatitis B virus (which is not infectious in mice) and another to produce small hairpin RNAs that silenced viral genes. About 40% of hepatocytes expressed the viral transgenes in response to the first plasmid. If the second plasmid was included, levels of detectable hepatitis B virus antigens in hepatocytes fell by 99%, and replication of the viral genomes was inhibited. Kay is now looking at using adeno-associated virus as a vector in mouse models of human hepatitis infection.

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References

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Silence is golden. Nat Biotechnol 24, 306–308 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0306-306

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0306-306

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