Fig. 2.

Potential therapeutic approaches for targeting lncRNAs. Several methods, including small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) and ribozymes or deoxyribozymes, can be used to block the function of lncRNAs. A: Synthetic double-stranded short RNA can be delivered to cells and the antisense strand of the siRNA duplex loads on to the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) and degrades the targeted lncRNA. B: ASOs are single-stranded, chemically modified DNA oligomers (less than 25 nt in length) that are designed to be complementary to a target lncRNA. ASOs form a heteroduplex with the target lncRNA, and RNase H recognizes the lncRNA-DNA heteroduplex and cleaves the RNA strand. C: However, ribozymes or deoxyribozymes do not dependent on the RISC, which mediates siRNA-induced degradation, or on RNase H. IncRNA: long non-coding RNA.