RNA-Mediated Therapeutics: From Gene Inactivation to Clinical Application

Small Extracellular Vesicles' miRNAs: Biomarkers and Therapeutics for Neurodegenerative Diseases

Neurodegenerative diseases are critical in the healthcare system as patients suffer from progressive diseases despite currently available drug management. Indeed, the growing ageing population will burden the country's healthcare system and the caretakers. Thus, there is a need for new management that could stop or reverse the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Stem cells possess a remarkable regenerative potential that has long been investigated to resolve these issues. Some breakthroughs have been achieved thus far to replace the damaged brain cells; however, the procedure's invasiveness has prompted scientists to investigate using stem-cell small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) as a non-invasive cell-free therapy to address the limitations of cell therapy. With the advancement of technology to understand the molecular changes of neurodegenerative diseases, efforts have been made to enrich stem cells' sEVs with miRNAs to increase the therapeutic efficacy of the sEVs. In this article, the pathophysiology of various neurodegenerative diseases is highlighted. The role of miRNAs from sEVs as biomarkers and treatments is also discussed. Lastly, the applications and delivery of stem cells and their miRNA-enriched sEVs for treating neurodegenerative diseases are emphasised and reviewed.

Use of RNA in drug design

This is a review of RNA as a target for small molecules (ribosomes, riboswitches, regulatory RNAs) and RNA-derived oligonucleotides as tools (antisense/small interfering RNA, ribozymes, aptamers/decoy RNA and microRNA). This review highlights the present state of research using RNA as a drug target or as a potential drug candidate and explains at which stage and to what extent rational design could eventually be involved. Special attention has been paid to the recent potential clinical applications of RNA either as drugs or drug targets. The review deals mainly with mechanistic approaches rather than with physicochemical or computational aspects of RNA-based drug design.

Insights into functional modulation of catalytic RNA activity

RNA molecules play critical roles in cell biology, and novel findings continuously broaden their functional repertoires. Apart from their well-documented participation in protein synthesis, it is now apparent that several noncoding RNAs (i.e., micro-RNAs and riboswitches) also participate in the regulation of gene expression. The discovery of catalytic RNAs had profound implications on our views concerning the evolution of life on our planet at a molecular level. A characteristic attribute of RNA, probably traced back to its ancestral origin, is the ability to interact with and be modulated by several ions and molecules of different sizes. The inhibition of ribosome activity by antibiotics has been extensively used as a therapeutical approach, while activation and substrate-specificity alteration have the potential to enhance the versatility of ribozyme-based tools in translational research. In this review, we will describe some representative examples of such modulators to illustrate the potential of catalytic RNAs as tools and targets in research and clinical approaches.