Yang Yongbo, Wu Chengxiang, Wu Jianguo, Nerurkar Vivek R, Yanagihara Richard, Lu Yuanan
Department of Public Health Sciences, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
J Med Virol. 2008 May;80(5):930-6. doi: 10.1002/jmv.21164.
West Nile virus (WNV) has been responsible for the largest outbreaks of arboviral encephalitis in U.S. history. No specific drug is currently available for the effective treatment of WNV infection. To exploit RNA interference as a potential therapeutic approach, a Moloney murine leukemia virus-based retrovirus vector was used to effectively deliver WNV-specific small interfering RNA (siRNA) into human neuroblastoma HTB-11 cells. Viral plaque assays demonstrated that transduced cells were significantly refractory to WNV replication, as compared to untransduced control cells (P < 0.05), which correlated with the reduced expression of target viral genes and respective viral proteins. Therefore, retrovirus-mediated delivery of siRNA for gene silencing can be used to study the specific functions of viral genes associated with replication and may have potential therapeutic applications.
西尼罗河病毒(WNV)在美国历史上引发了最大规模的虫媒病毒性脑炎疫情。目前尚无特效药物可有效治疗WNV感染。为了探索将RNA干扰作为一种潜在的治疗方法,研究人员使用了一种基于莫洛尼鼠白血病病毒的逆转录病毒载体,将WNV特异性小干扰RNA(siRNA)有效导入人神经母细胞瘤HTB - 11细胞。病毒空斑试验表明,与未转导的对照细胞相比,转导后的细胞对WNV复制具有显著抗性(P < 0.05),这与靶病毒基因和相应病毒蛋白表达的降低相关。因此,逆转录病毒介导的siRNA递送用于基因沉默可用于研究与复制相关的病毒基因的特定功能,并可能具有潜在的治疗应用价值。