RNA Interference News and Research

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Groundbreaking results for the potential treatment of Huntington's Disease

Sirna Therapeutics announced today that its collaborator at the University of Iowa, Dr. Beverly Davidson, published groundbreaking results for the potential treatment of Huntington's Disease (HD).

12 Apr 2005

Step toward a potential treatment for Huntington's disease

Researchers at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine have taken another step toward a potential treatment for Huntington's disease (HD). Using an approach called RNA interference (RNAi), the scientists reduced levels of the disease-causing HD protein in mice and significantly improved the movement and neurological abnormalities normally associated with the disease.

4 Apr 2005

Research tool for turning off genes may eventually have therapeutic application

A research team based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has identified 80 new genes essential to the process of RNA interference (RNAi), a powerful new research tool for inactivating genes in plants or animals.

28 Mar 2005

RNAi Consortium to accelerate genetic research

Whitehead Institute has joined ten other leading biomedical organizations in an $18 million, three-year public-private consortium that will create a comprehensive library of gene inhibitors to be made available to the entire scientific community.

16 Mar 2005

Most comprehensive genome-wide experimental analyses of sense-antisense transcripts to date

A team of scientists led by Dr. Kuniya Abe from the RIKEN BioResource Center in Japan has performed one of the most comprehensive genome-wide experimental analyses of sense-antisense transcripts to date. Their findings are published in the April issue of the journal Genome Research.

15 Mar 2005

Gene therapy helps Lou Gehrig's disease

The most common form of motor neurone disease, called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is caused when neurones in the spinal cord die, leading to muscle wasting and total paralysis.

14 Mar 2005

RNA interference as promising therapy for ALS

Scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have used RNA interference in transgenic mice to silence a mutated gene that causes inherited cases of amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), substantially delaying both the onset and the progression rate of the fatal motor neuron disease.

13 Mar 2005

Scientists show knocking out key signals will cause diabetes

Using a revolutionary technique to turn off chemical signals inside the cell, scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have discovered that the different metabolic abnormalities present in type 2 diabetes can be caused by knocking out two key signals in liver cells.

11 Feb 2005

Gene used in brain development can cause childhood brain cancers

A gene that's normally silenced after contributing to brain development was found to be expressed in cells from medulloblastoma, the most common form of pediatric brain malignancy in children, scientists report in an article published in the February 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

3 Feb 2005

Researchers identify new genes necessary for embryonic development

Researchers at New York University and the medical schools at Harvard and Yale universities have identified new genes necessary for embryonic development, according to findings published in the latest issue of Genome Research.

31 Jan 2005

Scientists discover that microRNAs regulate thousands of human genes

For many years, DNA and proteins have been viewed as the real movers and shakers in genomic studies, with RNA seen as little more than a messenger that shuttles information between the two.

16 Jan 2005

First program to apply RNA interference (RNAi) technology to asthma

Sirna Therapeutics, Inc. has announced the first program to apply RNA interference (RNAi) technology to asthma, a highly prevalent, chronic disease accounting for an estimated $13 billion in healthcare costs in the United States, a number which is forecast to grow considerably by the end of the decade.

7 Jan 2005

Next-generation therapeutics with the potential to successfully treat Lou Gehrig's disease

The hopes of many that ALS (commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease) will one day be a disease of the past, studied in medical textbooks, conquered by the dedication of those who have worked tirelessly to eradicate it might be realized in our lifetime.

6 Dec 2004

Temperature sensing protein implicated in mediating thermotaxis

The songwriter Noel Coward once declared that only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the midday sun. MIT biologists Mark Rosenzweig, Paul Garrity and their colleagues now have a third candidate for the lyric—fruit flies with defects in a gene called dTrpA1.

4 Dec 2004