| Abstract |
 Dr.
Boden will attempt to design a new generation of nucleic acid
based therapeutics for HIV infection, and, in the process,
establish methodologies for post-transcriptional gene silencing
(PTGS) in vivo. On a mechanistic level, Dr Boden notes that
HIV can be thought of as a new gene introduced into a human
genome that has encountered and, in the aggregate, survived
previous retroviral invasions. The question Dr. Boden seeks
to answer is: can HIV be selectively silenced in vivo? Past
research has focused on RNA interference (RNAi), the term
used to describe the sequence specific degradation of mRNA
following the cellular introduction of homologous double stranded
(ds) RNA. RNAi can be engineered in mammalian cells with the
use of short interfering RNA (siRNA) - i.e., dsRNA less than
30 base pairs in length. Dr. Boden and his lab hypothesize
that cells that express siRNA homologous to mRNA species encoding
viral proteins will be able to selectively silence HIV and
thereby survive infection.
Disease ultimately reflects the aberrant behavior of a fraction
of cells that perturb biologic processes required for normal
physiological function. Many disease states are characterized
by the selective amplification of nucleic acid species. RNAi
may emerge as a powerful therapeutic tool to selectively degrade
disease-specific nucleic acid species for clinical benefit.
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