RNA Interference – Regulations and Application in Oncology

RNA interference (RNAi) is a naturally occurring method of inhibition of gene expres-sion in organisms. Chemically synthesized or vector-based short interference RNAs (siRNAs) are used to cause a specific and selective gene knockdown in cell lines or animal models. Different approaches to introduce siRNAs in human body with a higher selectivity and efficacy have been tried. In any way, RNAi is accepted as a revolution-ary tool to suppress oncogenes and other highly expressed genes in human malignan-cies, which have been previously found by means of microarray strategies. In this review, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of RNAi technologies, dis-cuss the currently invented siRNA libraries and give some examples of their applica-tion in clinical oncology