Chandigarh, March 11
A US-based Indian doctor, Dr Rajvir Dahiya, and his team of researchers, have discovered a new function of ribonucleic acid (RNA) for gene activation which may open new vistas in the treatment and prevention of various
diseases, including cancer.
Two prestigious journals, Science and Nature Chemical Biology, recently reported the novel discovery by Dr Dahiya and his team about the activation of genes by double strand RNA. Dr Dahiya, who hails from Haryana, is a professor and director of the Urology Research Center at the University of California School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco.
It may be pertinent to mention that Dr Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Dr Andrew Fire of Stanford University's School of Medicine discovered that RNA plays a crucial role in regulating gene expression-the ability to turn genes off. They won a Nobel Prize in October,2006, for their work in discovering that RNA can silence the gene.
“Now my research team has discovered a new function of the RNA for gene
activation. This novel discovery will open new directions in regulating genes that are involved in etiology of various diseases
and, thus, have the potential for the treatment and prevention of various diseases,” said Dr Dahiya in a telephonic conversation
with The Tribune. Said Dr Dahiya :“Dr Mello and Dr Fire won a Nobel Prize for their work in identifying the mechanism for a process called the RNA interference, or RNAi. They found that the RNA blocks a gene from delivering its message to proteins, essentially shutting down that gene”.
Since then, scientists around the world have run with the idea finding ways for RNAi to turn off a variety of
genes, in particular, those that cause disease. The technique has also shown a remarkable clinical promise. RNAi-based treatments are being tested in many animal models of disease-high cholesterol, HIV, cancer and hepatitis, among others and clinical trials have been launched in humans with specific types of macular degeneration and
pneumonia. The potential applications of the research are vast, adds Dr Dahiya.
Now the team led by Dr Dahiya has made another interesting claim that such RNAs can also have the opposite effect: They can turn genes on. This surprising skill is dubbed RNAa because the RNAs activate genes is reported in the online edition of the Journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.
"RNAa may be a powerful biological tool and could lead to new therapies for diseases such as cancer," says Dr Dahiya holding that his team has tried to use RNAi to block transcription of the human E-cadherin tumor suppressor gene. When we added synthetic RNAs that specifically targeted the gene’s DNA sequence to human prostate cancer cells, E-cadherin levels unexpectedly went up, not
down. It was immediately quite obvious. We then used synthetic RNAs to boost expression of two other genes in cultured
cells. Now we can say they can activate numerous tumor suppressor genes with RNAa.
"If the effect turns out to be predictable, RNAa could be very powerful in terms of potential [anti-cancer] therapeutic application," Dr Dahiya and UCSF have filed for a patent on RNAa technology.
Recently, in the February issue of "Nature Chemical Biology”, Dr Corey and his group from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center also confirmed results of Dr Dahiya and his team in breast cancer model.
