Satellite symposium: Sigma-Aldrich

esiRNAs – Finally, specific gene silencing is possible

Sunday 6 September 14:00 to 14:15 - Hall 10AB

Speaker: Dr. Iris Steinebrunner - Senior Scientist, Eupheria Biotech, Germany

RNA interference (RNAi) has been widely successful in discovering novel gene functions. One troublesome side effect of this technology, however, has been off-targeting, meaning that transcripts other than the desired target are silenced as well.

How to overcome this obstacle?

Eupheria Biotech developed an innovative strategy called esiRNAs, short for endoribonuclease-prepared siRNA pools. Instead of providing one small interfering (si)RNA against a desired target, we offer a pool of siRNAs, which differ in their sequences, but all recognize the same target. Thus, all siRNAs in this pool work together in silencing the target, yet their off targets diverge because of their sequence diversity. And since each siRNA sequence represents only a tiny fraction of the total siRNA pool, the off-target effect of each siRNA type is also minimal.

We compared the specificity of conventional single sequence siRNAs versus our esiRNAs on numerous targets by microarray analysis. The results will be shown, which demonstrate the striking specificity of esiRNAs versus conventional siRNAs, while achieving the same or even higher knock-down levels.

We will also present exemplary applications of esiRNAs in modern research, and give you plenty of opportunity to ask questions.