RNA interference and its role in cancer therapy

In todays' environment, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the role of cancer in social health. Although a huge budget is allocated on cancer research every year, cancer remains the second global cause of death. And, exclusively, less than 50% of patients afflicted with advanced cancer live one year subsequent to standard cancer treatments. RNA interference (RNAi) is a mechanism for gene silencing. Such mechanism possesses uncanny ability in targeting cancer-related genes. A majority of gene products involved in tumorigenesis have recently been utilized as targets in RNAi based therapy. The evidence from these studies indicates that RNAi application for targeting functional carcinogenic molecules, tumor resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy is required in today's cancer treatment. Knock downing of gene products by RNAi technology exerts antiproliferative and proapoptotic effects upon cell culture systems, animal models and in clinical trials in the most studies. The recognition of RNAi mechanism and the progress in this field leaded several new RNAi-based drugs to Clinical Trial phases. This has also developed genome based personalized cancer therapeutics. Hopefully, this type of treatment will work as one of the efficient one for cancer patients.