Harnessing RNA interference for the treatment of viral infections

Exploiting the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway to inhibit viral gene expression has become an active field of research. The approach has potential for therapeutic application and several viruses are susceptible to RNAi-mediated knockdown. Differences in the characteristics of individual viruses require that viral gene silencing be tailored to specific infections. Important considerations are viral tissue tropism, acute or chronic nature of the infection and the efficiency with which antiviral sequences can be delivered to affected tissue. Both synthetic short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and expressed RNAi activators are being developed for viral therapy. The sustained silencing of expressed antiviral sequences is useful for countering chronic viral infection. siRNAs, which may be chemically modified to improve specificity and stability, are being developed for knockdown of viruses that cause acute or chronic infections. Preventing viral escape from silencing is important and overcoming this problem using combinatorial RNAi or through silencing of host dependency factors is promising. Although improving delivery efficiency and limiting off-target effects remain obstacles, rapid progress continues to be made in the field and it is likely that the goal of achieving licensed RNAi-based viral therapies will soon be realized.