A review on current status of antiviral siRNA

Qureshi, Abid; Tantray, Vaqar Gani; Kirmani, Altaf Rehman; Ahangar, Abdul Ghani

Viral diseases like influenza, AIDS, hepatitis, and Ebola cause severe epidemics worldwide. Along with their resistant strains, new pathogenic viruses continue to be discovered so creating an ongoing need for new antiviral treatments. RNA interference is a cellular gene‐silencing phenomenon in which sequence‐specific degradation of target mRNA is achieved by means of complementary short interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules. Short interfering RNA technology affords a potential tractable strategy to combat viral pathogenesis because siRNAs are specific, easy to design, and can be directed against multiple strains of a virus by targeting their conserved gene regions. In this review, we briefly summarize the current status of siRNA therapy for representative examples from different virus families. In addition, other aspects like their design, delivery, medical significance, bioinformatics resources, and limitations are also discussed.