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news.Tekmira Pharmaceuticals has announced that one of its collaborators, the National Cancer Institute, has presented promising preclinical data treating liver cancer using small interfering RNA enabled by the company's stable nucleic acid-lipid particles delivery technology.
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Scientists at the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Laboratory of Experimental Carcinogenesis and the surgery branch of the NCI worked in collaboration with Tekmira scientists to develop small interfering RNA (siRNA) to silence the CSN5 gene.
The CSN5 siRNA delivered systemically using Tekmira’s stable nucleic acid-lipid particles (SNALP) technology resulted in a significant reduction in tumor burden in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumor bearing mice, said Tekmira.
According to the company, CSN5 could represent a novel therapeutic target to treat HCC. Down regulation of CSN5 using siRNA increases apoptosis (programmed cell death) by restoring levels of tumor suppressor proteins p53 and p27. Silencing the CSN5 gene has also been shown to decrease a certain population of cells thought to be cancer stem cells.
Tekmira and NCI are continuing to collaborate on identifying novel cancer genes and demonstrating anti-tumor activity by silencing these genes through RNA interference.
Mark Murray, Tekmira’s president and CEO, said: “We have had a very successful collaboration with NCI over the past two years. By combining their expertise in identifying novel cancer genes and our expertise in designing and delivering siRNA molecules, we have been able to generate this promising data targeting the CSN5 gene.”