Delivery of RNAi Therapeutics to the Airways—From Bench to Bedside

Qiu, Yingshan; Lam, Jenny K. W.; Leung, Susan W. S.; Liang, Wanling

C-myc oncogene is a downstream conduit for most oncogenic signals. It is necessary for the growth control, differentiation and apoptosis. Abnormal expression of c-myc is associated with many tumors. De-activation of myc is efficacious for lung tumor therapy [111] . Conde et al. delivered siRNA targeting c-myc to the lung of mouse using RGD-surface-modified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) by intratracheal instillation. RGD peptide (Arg-Gly-Asp) is a cell adhesion peptide responsible to mediate cell adhesion and proliferation by binding to the integrin avb3 receptor family, a specific marker for angiogenesis and up-regulated in the endothelium. This strategy successfully suppressed c-myc expression level and tumor cell proliferation, resulting in approximately 80% increase in survival of orthograft mouse tumor models [107] .