The Chemistry and Biology of Oligonucleotide Conjugates

Short DNA or RNA oligonucleotides have tremendous potential as therapeutic agents. Because of their ability to engage in Watson-Crick base pairing they can interact with messenger mRNA or pre-mRNA targets with high selectivity and thus offer the possibility of precise manipulation of gene expression. This possibility has engendered extensive efforts to develop oligonucleotides as drugs, with many candidates already in clinical trials. However, a major impediment to the maturation of oligonucleotide-based therapeutics is the fact that these relatively large and usually highly charged molecules have great difficulty crossing cellular membranes and thus in penetrating to their sites of action in the cytosol or nucleus. In this Account we first summarize some basic aspects of the biology of antisense and siRNA oligonucleotides and then discuss chemical conjugation as an approach to improving the intracellular delivery and therapeutic potential of these agents. Our emphasis will be on the pharmacological ramifications of oligonucleotide conjugates rather than the details of conjugation chemistry. One important approach has been conjugation with ligands designed to bind to particular receptors and thus provide specificity to the interaction of cells with oligonucleotides. Another approach has been to couple antisense or siRNA with agents such as cell penetrating peptides that are designed to provoke escape of the conjugate from intracellular vesicular compartments. Both of these approaches have enjoyed some success. However, there remains much to be learned before oligonucleotide conjugates can find an important place in human therapeutics