Speaker
Description
Breast cancer became the world’s most prevalent cancer surpassing lung cancer and presented great challenges because of the unavailability of effective treatment strategy. Hence, a gene therapy-based cancer treatment strategy can offer the privilege of more targeting accuracy and fewer side effects. In this technique, small fragments of oligonucleotides (non-coding RNAs such as miRNA, siRNA and shRNA) are delivered into the tumor cells to silence the target gene. However, its translation into the in vivo settings remains challenging due to the absence of a proper delivery technique. Generally Viral and non-viral carriers are employed for in vivo delivery of these RNA drugs. Despite providing a higher degree of transfection efficiency by viral carriers, non-viral carriers are preferred due to their non-immunogenic and comparatively non-toxic nature. Some frequently used non-viral carriers include cationic, anionic, polymeric micro- and nano-particles, lipid-based delivery systems, conjugates, micelles, cyclodextrins and protein complex etc. The nanoparticles with sizes ranging from 1–100 nm in diameter and large surface area have the potential to penetrate and accumulate within tumor cells, thereby enhancing the circulation time and allowing better therapeutic efficacy, simultaneously minimizing the off-target effects. This review summarizes that a novel therapeutic approach could be established by delivering RNAi through nano-formulations to target different genes overexpressed in breast cancer. Moreover, a rational combination of the anti-cancer drugs with gene therapy can be developed to obtain a synergistic effect which might be of great help to overcome breast cancer therapy failure.