Antisense oligonucleotides for target validation and gene function determination

Antisense technology is attracting attention from the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries because it provides a high-throughput and systematic approach to drug target validation and gene function discovery. Antisense represents a logical approach to gene function analysis and discovery as it is specific, broadly applicable, and can be designed with minimal information (ie, expressed sequence tags). This technology in combination with other emerging technologies (eg, microarray technology), will enable efficient 'mining' of the sequence data generated by the human genome project. This review addresses recent advances in the antisense field and discusses the potential use of antisense technology for functional genomics approaches.