Antisense and RNA interference approaches to target validation in pain research

In recent years numerous potential new targets for the development of novel drugs to treat chronic pain have been identified. Antisense strategies provide a straightforward approach to validate and further analyze their function. Furthermore, they offer the possibility of investigating a single member of a closely related family of proteins that cannot be easily targeted using small-molecule pharmacological tools. The recent discovery that short double-stranded RNA molecules can be employed to induce RNA interference in mammalian systems has opened exciting new roads for functional genomics. Gene silencing by small interfering RNAs has been demonstrated in neurons, and several targets involved in pain perception have been addressed. Furthermore, promising in vivo results have recently been obtained with small interfering RNAs.