Halib Nadia, Pavan Nicola, Trombetta Carlo, Dapas Barbara, Farra Rossella, Scaggiante Bruna, Grassi Mario, Grassi Gabriele
Department of Basic Sciences & Oral Biology, Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 55100, Malaysia.
Urology Clinic, Department of Medical, Surgical and Health Science, University of Trieste, I-34149 Trieste, Italy.
Pharmaceutics. 2022 Mar 27;14(4):718. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics14040718.
The treatment of urological cancers has been significantly improved in recent years. However, for the advanced stages of these cancers and/or for those developing resistance, novel therapeutic options need to be developed. Among the innovative strategies, the use of small interfering RNA (siRNA) seems to be of great therapeutic interest. siRNAs are double-stranded RNA molecules which can specifically target virtually any mRNA of pathological genes. For this reason, siRNAs have a great therapeutic potential for human diseases including urological cancers. However, the fragile nature of siRNAs in the biological environment imposes the development of appropriate delivery systems to protect them. Thus, ensuring siRNA reaches its deep tissue target while maintaining structural and functional integrity represents one of the major challenges. To reach this goal, siRNA-based therapies require the development of fine, tailor-made delivery systems. Polymeric nanoparticles, lipid nanoparticles, nanobubbles and magnetic nanoparticles are among nano-delivery systems studied recently to meet this demand. In this review, after an introduction about the main features of urological tumors, we describe siRNA characteristics together with representative delivery systems developed for urology applications; the examples reported are subdivided on the basis of the different delivery materials and on the different urological cancers.
近年来，泌尿生殖系统癌症的治疗有了显著改善。然而，对于这些癌症的晚期阶段和/或那些产生耐药性的癌症，需要开发新的治疗选择。在创新策略中，使用小干扰RNA（siRNA）似乎具有很大的治疗价值。siRNA是双链RNA分子，几乎可以特异性靶向任何病理基因的mRNA。因此，siRNA对包括泌尿生殖系统癌症在内的人类疾病具有巨大的治疗潜力。然而，siRNA在生物环境中的脆弱性促使人们开发合适的递送系统来保护它们。因此，确保siRNA在保持结构和功能完整性的同时到达其深部组织靶点是主要挑战之一。为了实现这一目标，基于siRNA的疗法需要开发精细的、量身定制的递送系统。聚合物纳米颗粒、脂质纳米颗粒、纳米气泡和磁性纳米颗粒是最近为满足这一需求而研究的纳米递送系统。在这篇综述中，在介绍泌尿生殖系统肿瘤的主要特征之后，我们描述了siRNA的特性以及为泌尿外科应用开发的代表性递送系统；报道的例子根据不同的递送材料和不同的泌尿生殖系统癌症进行了细分。
