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Evaluation of the Efficacy And Toxicity of RNAs Targeting HIV-1 Production for Use in Gene or Drug Therapy
Published on: September 5, 2016
Effective Pol III-expressed long hairpin RNAs targeted to multiple unique sites of HIV-1
Sheena M Saayman1, Patrick Arbuthnot, Marc S Weinberg
1Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit, Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Abstract:
The RNA interference (RNAi) pathway has in recent years been exploited for the development of novel antiviral therapies. The emergence of viral escape mutants, however, is a major impediment to the use of RNAi effectors to treat highly mutable viruses such as HIV-1. A combinatorial approach is therefore required for long-term inhibition of gene expression. RNA Pol III-driven long hairpin RNA (lhRNA) duplexes can be cleaved several times by Dicer, yielding multiple functional siRNAs from a single construct. Here we describe a method for the generation of ectopically expressed U6-lhRNAs encoding three separate siRNA sequences targeting unique sites in HIV-1. This methodological overview explains some crucial aspects of lhRNA design and cloning as well as facile experiments to determine their efficacy in cell culture.
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