Guide Strand 3'-End Modifications Regulate siRNA Specificity.

Short interfering RNA (siRNA)-triggered gene knockdown through the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway is widely used to study gene function, and siRNA-based therapeutics are in development. However, as the guide strand of an siRNA can function like a natural microRNA (miRNA), siRNAs often repress hundreds of off-target transcripts with complementarity only to the seed region (nucleotides 2-8) of the guide strand. Here, we describe novel guide strand 3'-end modifications derived from 1-ethynylribose (1-ER) and copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reactions and evaluate their impact on target versus miRNA-like off-target knockdown.

Base modification strategies to modulate immune stimulation by an siRNA.

Immune stimulation triggered by siRNAs is one of the major challenges in the development of safe RNAi-based therapeutics. Within an immunostimulatory siRNA sequence, this hurdle is commonly addressed by using ribose modifications (e.g.