Mackenziebrandt8046

Small interfering RNA (siRNA)-based therapeutics holds the promise to treat a wide range of human diseases that are currently incurable using conventional therapies. selleck chemical Most siRNA therapeutic efforts to date have focused on the treatment of liver diseases due to major breakthroughs in the development of efficient strategies for delivering siRNA drugs to the liver. Indeed, the development of lipid nanoparticle-formulated and GalNAc-conjugated siRNA therapeutics has resulted in recent FDA approvals of the first siRNA-based drugs, patisiran for the treatment of hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis and givosiran for the treatment of acute hepatic porphyria, respectively. Here, we describe the current strategies for delivering siRNA drugs to the liver and summarize recent advances in clinical development of siRNA therapeutics for the treatment of liver diseases.Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are RNA molecules with promising therapeutic potential as a result of their selective mRNA cleavage. However, despite recent progress, low stability in the bloodstream is an impediment to successful administration in vivo. Thus, the availability of flexible and rapid methods for studying siRNA stability and vehicles is crucial for future novel siRNA-based therapeutics. Herein, we report a fast Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) method based on agarose gel electrophoresis to evaluate the stability of siRNA in serum as well as siRNA interaction with serum proteins and enzymes.Despite the therapeutic utility of small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules, the development of a safe and reliable method to selectively target diseased organs and tissues is still a critical need for their translation to the clinic. Here we describe how nucleic acid-based aptamers against cell surface epitopes may be used to address this issue. We discuss the most recent examples and advances in the field of aptamer siRNA delivery and provide a fast and simple protocol for the design and generation of aptamer-siRNA chimeras. The described approach is based on the annealing of the targeting aptamer, and the antisense strand through "stick" complementary sequences elongated at their 3' end, and the subsequent paring with the sense strand. Such a protocol allows a modular non-covalent generation of the constructs and permits an efficient delivery of the siRNA moiety into aptamer target cells.RNA interference mediated by small interfering RNA (siRNA) has been widely used as a procedure to knock down the expression of an intended target gene with perfect sequence complementarity. However, siRNA often exhibits off-target effects on genes with partial sequence complementarities. Such off-target effect is an undesirable adverse effect for knocking down a target gene specifically. Here we describe the powerful strategy to avoid off-target effects without affecting the RNAi activity by the introduction of DNA or 2'-O-methyl modifications in the siRNA seed region. These two types of chemical modifications repress off-target effects through different molecular mechanisms.The discovery that gene expression can be silenced by exogenously introduced double-stranded RNAs into cells unveiled a hidden level of gene regulation by a variety of small RNA pathways, which are involved in regulating endogenous gene expression, defending against virus infections, and protecting the genome from invading transposons, both at the posttranscriptional and epigenetic levels. All endogenous RNA interference pathways share a conserved effector complex, which contains at least an argonaute protein and a short single-stranded RNA. Such argonaute-RNA complexes can repress the transcription of genes, target mRNA for site-specific cleavage, or block mRNA translation into proteins. This review outlines the history of RNAi discovery, function, and mechanisms of action. For comparison, it also touches on CRISPR interference.Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, originally experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, is the well-known animal model of multiple sclerosis, an immune- mediated, demyelinating, inflammatory chronic disease of the central nervous system. The experimental disease is widely utilized to test new therapies in preclinical studies, to investigate new hypothesis on the possible pathogenic mechanisms of autoimmune reaction directed against the central nervous system or more generally to investigate the interactions between the immune system and the central nervous system that lead to neuroinflammation. The experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis may be induced following different protocols in mammals, including nonhuman primates, and autoreactive CD4+ T-lymphocytes directed against myelin antigens are the main factors. Here, after introducing the model, we describe the protocol to induce active EAE in inbred mice, we report on a table the different clinical courses of EAE depending on the combination of antigen /mouse strain and we provide indications on how to evaluate the clinics and pathology of this induced disease.Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of severe chronic inflammatory conditions of the human gastrointestinal tract. Murine models of colitis have been invaluable tools to improve the understanding of IBD development and pathogenesis. While the disease etiology of IBD is complex and multifactorial, CD4+ T helper cells have been shown to strongly contribute to the disease pathogenesis of IBD. Here, we present a detailed protocol of the preclinical model of T-cell transfer colitis, which can easily be utilized in the laboratory to study T helper cell functions in intestinal inflammation.Asthma is a highly prevalent lung disease, characterized by airway dysfunction and chronic inflammation. Asthma occurs in both children and adults, but frequently originates in early life. Heterogeneous asthma phenotypes exist, but Th2 cells are key players in a large proportion of cases, while other CD4+ T cell subsets are also implicated in driving and limiting pathology. In this chapter, we describe methods for establishing allergic airway disease to model asthma in adult and neonatal mice, along with protocols for measuring key disease parameters and quantifying and phenotyping CD4+ T cell subtypes.