StudiesRNAi Technologies  RNA interference (RNAi) is one of the most promising and interesting platform technologies to have emerged in recent years. RNAi technologies can be used to study many different types of biologically interesting problems including, gene expression and function, biological pathway elucidation, and nucleic acid structure. The awarding of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Medicine to Dr. Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for their discovery of this important gene silencing mechanism highlights the importance of this emerging field. In order to understand this field more fully, The Science Advisory Board gathered the opinion of 436 scientists working with RNAi technologies. We spoke with 113 scientists working in industrial settings, and 323 scientists working in academic or government settings. Scientists from all over the world were consulted for this important study, with 272 researchers from North America, 98 from Europe and 66 from Asia, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, and Central/South America. The broadest category of RNAi experiments are defined by the type of molecule the researcher uses in their work. The most commonly used types of RNAi molecules used are small-interfering RNAs (siRNA) – 88%, short-hairpin RNAs (shRNA) – 50%, and micro RNAs (miRNA) – 32%. In addition, researchers commonly use RNAi drug delivery systems – 39%.  These data were analyzed to understand the molecule preference of researchers working in academic/government institutions and/or industrial settings. Interestingly, shRNA was more frequently used by Academic/Government respondents than industrial respondents (53% vs. 41%, respectively) and miRNA was more frequently used by industrial respondents than academic respondents (39% vs. 29%, respectively). Less surprising, however, industrial scientists were more likely to use RNAi Drug Delivery Systems than their academic colleagues, (50% vs. 35%, respectively).  In addition to the types of molecules used, we asked Science Advisory Board members about the type of research they were conducting using these technologies. Among industrial researchers, 39% were using the technology for drug discovery and 25% were using RNAi to analyze gene function. Among academic researchers the most prevalent use of the technology was to analyze gene function (54%), and the second most prevalent use was for the elucidation of biological pathways (16%). These differential focuses of research are not entirely surprising given the mission of the industrial researcher will be more focused on drug discovery than the academic researcher.  While Science Advisory Board members report a significant difference in the type and use of RNAi technologies used between the industrial and academic researchers, no similar trend was observed when we asked researchers about the types of cells used in this research. The most popular cell lines were the immortalized adherent cell lines, followed by primary cells and tumor cell. Given the recent interest in stem/progenitor cells amongst researchers, it is interesting to note that only 4% of total respondents indicated using human stem cells or hematopoietic lineages in their studies. We invite you to participate in our discussion about this study in our Community Forum. For questions or comments, please Greg Thompson at g.thompson@scienceboard.net [ View Current & Future Studies ] [ View Past Studies ] |
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