Molecular Mechanisms of Antisense Oligonucleotides

Molecular Mechanisms of Antisense Oligonucleotides

In 1987, when I became interested in the notion of antisense technology, I returned to my roots in RNA biochemistry and began work to understand how oligonucleotides behave in biological systems. Since 1989, my research has focused primarily on this topic, although I have been involved in most areas of research in antisense technology. I believe that the art of excellent science is to frame lar...

Antisense oligonucleotides: basic concepts and mechanisms.

Conceptual simplicity, the possibility of rational design, relatively inexpensive cost, and developments in the sequencing of human genome have led to the use of short fragments of nucleic acid, commonly called oligonucleotides, either as therapeutic agents or as tools to study gene function. Furthermore, in the past decade, the development of antisense oligonucleotide technologies as therapeut...

Mechanisms of the inhibition of reverse transcription by antisense oligonucleotides.

We have demonstrated that the synthesis of cDNA by avian myeloblastosis virus and Moloney murine leukemia virus reverse transcriptases can be prevented by oligonucleotides bound to the RNA template approximately 100 nucleotides remote from the 3' end of the primer. The RNA was truncated at the level of the antisense oligonucleotide-RNA duplex during the reverse transcription. The key role playe...

Targeted delivery of antisense oligonucleotides by molecular conjugates.

Antisense oligonucleotides efficiently inhibit gene expression in vitro; however, the successful therapeutic application of this technology in vivo will require the development of improved delivery systems. In this report we describe a technique that efficiently delivers antisense oligonucleotides into cells using molecular conjugates. This technique, which was initially developed for the deliv...

Designing Antisense Oligonucleotides