Commentary Cell Science Reviews Vol 5 No 3 ISSN 1742-8130

Prospects for siRNA as a therapeutic tool in HIV treatment

HIV-1 infection has been reported as major cause of AIDS and primarily infects CD4+ T lymphocytes and monocytes/macrophages cells of the haematopoietic system. Increases in the number of new drug resistant HIV strains have become major obstacles in AIDS prevention programs. Many alternative treatments involving ribozyme, DNA vaccine or adjuvant vaccine strategies have been proposed to deal with AIDS, but so far none of them have proven very successful in preventing HIV infection. However a recent report by Kumar and colleagues has reinforced the case for the use of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) in the treatment of HIV infection. The mechanism of sequence complementarity utilized by siRNAs against mRNAs destined for destruction provides a novel approach through which to deal with HIV infection. However, the targeted delivery of siRNAs to designated cells has long been a major challenge for scientists, although the cell specific delivery of siRNA using antibodies is currently showing enormous potential. The use of siRNA as a tool against HIV infection offers many advantages over conventional drug strategies, but still requires many refinements before it can be utilized as an effective treatment strategy.

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