Reacción a "The ‘dark transcriptome’ has been used to reduce inflammation in mice and human cells"

The press release is accurate and reflects well the work carried out and its potential therapeutic importance. It may be aimed at a more scientific audience and could be somewhat technical for a general readership.

There are many human diseases that are complex in terms of genetic and environmental factors—for example, the exaggerated response of the immune system in inflammatory processes or autoimmunity. Current treatments are usually generic immunosuppressive or immunomodulatory drugs, although the use of inhibitory treatments based on antibodies or recombinant proteins is increasingly widespread. In this article, the authors successfully explore extremely specific treatments at an earlier point in the flow of genetic information: instead of inhibiting the action of proteins such as cytokines, they prevent them from being produced by inhibiting the translation of messenger RNA. To do this, they genetically engineer little-known genetic elements, the so-called long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), directed against very specific cytokine RNAs, thereby reducing the inflammatory response both in human immune cells in vitro and in vivo in mice. In addition, they use liposomes as a method for delivering the RNA, avoiding unexpected responses that can occur when delivery is carried out using viral vectors.

I believe this is a highly precise biological therapeutic tool that has not yet been used and that offers many possibilities for treating diseases in which it is necessary to silence a gene or a particular signaling pathway—not only in immune diseases, but also in cancer or neurodegeneration.