The development of a versatile technique to induce RNA interference (RNAi) without immune stimulation in vivo is of interest as existing approaches to trigger RNAi, such as small interfering RNA (siRNA) and plasmid DNA (pDNA) expressing short hairpin RNA (shRNA), present drawbacks arising from innate immune stimulation. To overcome them, an intelligent shRNA expression device (iRed) designed to...

PURPOSE This study aimed to explore the role of the Twist gene in the epithelial-mesenchymal transition of ovarian cancer. METHODS An RNA interference plasmid expressing a small interfering RNA (siRNA)-targeting Twist (Twist siRNA vector) was designed, constructed, and transfected into the human ovarian cancer cell line A2780. Transfection efficiency was assessed under a fluorescence microsco...

Pituitary adenomas are among the most prevalent forms of intrinsic brain tumors. Although most pituitary adenomas are benign, some of them may become invasive and cause significant mass effect and hormonal dysfunction. We have previously shown that β-catenin is overexpressed in human pituitary adenomas and its level correlates to tumor grades. In the present study, we further investigated the r...

p53 transduction is a potentially effective cancer therapy but does not result in a good therapeutic response in all human cancers due to resistance to apoptosis. To discover factors that overcome resistance to p53-induced apoptosis, we attempted to identify RNAi sequences that enhance p53-induced apoptosis. We screened a genome-wide lentiviral shRNA library in liver cancer Huh-7 and pancreatic...

UNLABELLED Gemcitabine is currently the standard therapy for pancreatic cancer. However, growing concerns over gemcitabine resistance mean that new combinatory therapies are required to prevent loss of efficacy with prolonged treatment. Here, we suggest that this could be achieved through co-administration of RNA interference agents targeting the ubiquitin ligase ITCH. Stable anti-ITCH siRNA an...

Inflammasome, an intracellular inflammatory machinery, has been reported to be involved in a variety of chronic degenerative diseases such as atherosclerosis, autoinflammatory diseases and Alzheimer's disease. The present study hypothesized that the formation and activation of inflammasomes associated with apoptosis associated speck-like protein (ASC) are an important initiating mechanism resul...

Short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) transcribed by RNA polymerase III (Pol III) promoters can trigger sequence-selective gene silencing in culture and in vivo and, therefore, may be developed to treat diseases caused by dominant, gain-of-function type of gene mutations. These diseases develop in people bearing one mutant and one wild-type gene allele. While the mutant is toxic, the wild-type performs i...