Pharma Blog Watch

Reverse Gene Silencing (In the Pipeline)
In his blog, Derek Lowe discusses a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about recent research in gene silencing. While conducting the studies, which involved small, double-stranded RNAs, scientists "found (to their great surprise) that their experiments were stimulating the transcription of their targeted genes, rather than shutting them down."

The findings "simultaneously complicate the RNAi field a great deal (it was gnarly enough already, thanks) and also open a door to some really unusual experiments," he writes. "Upregulating genes isn't very easy, and there are no doubt many ideas that have been waiting on a way to do it. There are therapeutic possibilities, too, naturally — but they'll have to wait on the same difficulties as the other RNA therapies."