Designing Potential Antisense Oligonucleotides (ASO) against Lung Cancer Associated microRNA and Studying their Interaction

Abstract

Abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an abundant class of small non-protein-coding RNAs that function as gene regulators. They regulate diverse biological processes and bioinformatics data indicates that each miRNA can control hundreds of gene targets, underscoring the potential influence of miRNAs on almost every genetic pathway. miRNA mutations or mis-expression correlate with various human cancers and miRNAs can function as tumor suppressors and oncogenes. miRNAs have been shown to repress the expression of important cancer-related genes and might prove useful in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. In this context, we identified various miRNAs associated with the prevalent cancer phenotype NSCLC/SCLC and used the respective target miRNA sequences as templates for designing antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs). We investigated the interaction of this cognate oligonucleotides and target miRNAs to hypotheses the inhibitory potential of such oligonucleotides through molecular docking studies.