Mining the genome with RNAi to select cancer drug targets

Abstract:: Identifying the most optimal novel targets for cancer drug discovery is a challenge because of the multi-factorial nature of the disease. Carefully designed studies that probe protein function and give insight into biological roles enables sound choices for drug discovery and development programs. We focus here on the impact of using RNAi to probe the biological function of proteins for target identification and selection for discovering small molecule drugs.Section Editors:Lance Liotta – National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USANeil Gibson – OSI Pharmaceuticals, NY, USARNA interference (RNAi) is a cellular process that results in degradation of the messenger RNA. The exploitation of RNAi for studying cellular function has gained rapid momentum. Importantly, it has allowed advances in studying gene function in mammalian cells in a high throughput manner. Integrating RNAi for drug discovery efforts should allow a more straightforward means of identifying meaningful drug targets amongst the putative proteins with predicted function; identified from the sequenced human genome. Time will tell whether RNAi is to be considered akin to the discovery of PCR in how it serves to revolutionalize biological studies.

Themes