Potential applications of siRNA in hepatitis C virus therapy.

Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are short RNA duplexes approximately 21 nucleotides long. When introduced into mammalian cells, siRNA can silence specific gene expression. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) replicates in the cytoplasm of liver cells without integration into the host genome. Because the HCV genome is a single-stranded RNA that functions both as a messenger RNA and as a viral replication template, destruction of HCV RNA could eliminate not only virally directed protein synthesis, but also viral replication. It has been demonstrated that siRNAs interfere with HCV gene expression and replication, and this review will describe the use of RNAi as a tool to inhibit HCV gene expression.