Clinical Development of Antisense Oligonucleotides as Anti-Cancer Therapeutics

Antisense oligonucleotides (AONs) are one of the several types of “antisense therapeutics” designed to modulate specific gene expression at the mRNA level. Although antisense strategies also include ribozymes (RNA enzyme) and, more recently, DNAzymes (a DNA analog of a ribozyme), AONs are by far the most advanced in clinical development and will be the focus of this review.