siRNA Delivery Using Hexameric Tetrahedral RNA Nanostructures for Gene Silencing

RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological response to double-stranded RNA that regulates expression of protein-coding genes and is a natural mechanism for gene silencing. Delivery of short, interfering RNA (siRNA) leads to RNAi of the targeted genes.  Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), developed a tetrahedral-shaped RNA nanoparticle for the delivery of siRNA to activate RNAi. The tetrahedral RNA nanoparticle is comprised of four RNA nanorings as the “faces” of the tetrahedral scaffold. The tetrahedral RNA nanoparticles can contain up to twelve Dicer substrate RNA duplexes, enabling the simultaneous targeting of multiple genes with several siRNA copies.  IC: NCINIH Ref. No.: E-075-2018Advantages: Increased functional capacity of RNA nanoparticlesCan contain up to 12 targeting siRNAs while maintaining thermodynamic stabilityAllows for substitution of several siRNAs with other functional moieties while still maintaining large number of targeting siRNAsShown to have superior cell uptake capabilities and silencing capacity compared to some other RNA-based nanoconstructsCan be assembled by co-transcriptional folding or one-pot processesApplications: Targeted therapeutic for cancerResearch tool to study cancerTargeted therapeutic for RNA-based virusesDevelopment Status: Basic (Target Identification)Updated On: Dec 14, 2018Date Published: F...
Source: NIH OTT Licensing Opportunities - Category: Research Authors: Source Type: research