• Investigation the effect of small interfering RNA (siRNA) in colorectal cancer therapy (Systematic review)
  • Mahya Najjari,1 Elahe Safari,2,* Mohammadhadi Feghhi,3
    1. Student Research Committee, Varastegan Institude for Medical Science, Mashhad, Iran
    2. School Of Nursery and Midwifery, Mashhad Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran
    3. School Of Medicine, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran


  • Introduction: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third malignant cancer that is the main cause of death from cancers worldwide. So far, many treatments have been used to improve colorectal cancer, one of which is gene therapy. SiRNA is ribonucleic acids to length 18 to 21 that are encoded in the RISC protein complex to degrade their complementary mRNA, resulting in silencing after translation of the gene. It seems that treatment using SiRNA is a useful gene therapy in curing CRC, so the aim of this study is investigating the effect of small interfering RNA (siRNA) in colorectal cancer therapy.
  • Methods: This review article was performed within articles published at PubMed, Science direct, Google Scholar, SID and Cochrane until July 2020. The keywords were small interfering RNA OR siRNA, colorectal cancer, Nano liposome and treatment. By searching this database; 89 articles were found, 48 of them by reading titles and abstracts were removed, because they were not related. 41 articles were selected under the inclusion criteria.
  • Results: Finally 41 articles were included in the study. The results showed; Gene silencing of Rpt4 by using siRNA inhibited cell proliferation, reduced clonogenic survival and induced apoptosis in HCT-116 colon cancer cells. Using of nanoparticles combined with siRNA against CX3CL1 reduced the recruitment of Ly6c10 monocytes and improved outcome of anti VEGFR2 therapy in mouse CRCs. Tripolyphosphate (TPP) modified chitosan (CS) encoded with TGF-B1 inhibits siRNA (This factor TGFB1 increases tumorigenesis in advanced CRC). B7-H4 siRNA was able to inhibit proliferation, invasion, and migration of colorectal cancer cell line affectively through targeting CXCL12/CXCR4 and JAK2/STAT3. The siRNA against KRAS has been applied to prevent the proliferation of KRAS mutated CRC cells and to reduce the tumor growth in a xenograft mouse mode .The combined therapy of siRNA (PIK3CA + KRAS or Akt2 + KRAS) prepared a synergistic prevention of CRC cell proliferation and an increase in apoptosis.
  • Conclusion: It seems that siRNA could be used for a variety of goals such as the suppression of CRC cell proliferation and induction of cell apoptosis, overcoming multidrug resistance and prevention of CRC metastasis without making immune responses, however need to be more research done at this topic.
  • Keywords: Small interfering RNA (siRNA), Colorectal cancer, Nano liposome, Treatment