Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Locked nucleic acid (LNA) mediated improvements in siRNA stability and functionality

2005; Oxford University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/nar/gki193

1362-4962

Joacim Elmén, Håkan Thonberg, Karl Ljungberg, Miriam Frieden, Majken Westergaard, Yunhe Xu, Britta Wahrén, Zicai Liang, Henrik Ørum, Troels Koch, Claes Wahlestedt,

MicroRNA in disease regulation

Therapeutic application of the recently discovered small interfering RNA (siRNA) gene silencing phenomenon will be dependent on improvements in molecule bio-stability, specificity and delivery. To address these issues, we have systematically modified siRNA with the synthetic RNA-like high affinity nucleotide analogue, Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA). Here, we show that incorporation of LNA substantially enhances serum half-life of siRNA's, which is a key requirement for therapeutic use. Moreover, we provide evidence that LNA is compatible with the intracellular siRNA machinery and can be used to reduce undesired, sequence-related off-target effects. LNA-modified siRNAs targeting the emerging disease SARS, show improved efficiency over unmodified siRNA on certain RNA motifs. The results from this study emphasize LNA's promise in converting siRNA from a functional genomics technology to a therapeutic platform.