ABSTRACT
RNA nanotechnology is understood as the engineering of RNA for intermolecular and intramolecular interactions that lead to self-assembled nanoparticles (Guo 2010, 2005). Specifically, DNA-packaging RNA (pRNA) has been described to form various architectures, including dimers, trimers, and hexamers (Guo et al. 1998; Shu et al. 2003). Additionally, supramolecular self-assemblies of therapeutic RNA, such as small interfering RNA (siRNA) (Afonin et al. 2011; Lee et al. 2012), were described for the delivery of RNAbased nanomedicines. One application of successfully constructed RNA nanoparticles is nanomedicine, the medical application of molecular nanotechnology. Nanomedicine is believed to lead to progress in human therapeutics in terms of improving human health at the molecular scale (Freitas 2005), especially concerning so far “undruggable” targets (Verdine and Walensky 2007) with new and smart medicines equipped with high bioavailability and few side effects. Nanomedicines are expected to have a variety of implications in both treatment (Zhang et al. 2007) and diagnosis (Jain 2007), which is also expressed in the neologism “theragnostics” (Ozdemir et al. 2006; Shubayev et al. 2009). While nanotechnology enables diagnosis at the single-cell and molecular level, nanomedical therapeutics are expected to be specifically or even personally tailored.
