Antisense therapy

Antisense therapy is a theoretical form of treatment for genetic disorders. When the genetic sequence of a particular gene is known to be causative of a particular disease, it is possible to synthesize DNA that will bind to the messenger RNA produced by that gene, effectively turning that gene "off".

This synthesized DNA is termed "anti-sense" DNA because its base sequence is the opposite of the gene's messenger RNA (so that a segment "AAGGTC" would be blocked by the anti-sense segment "TTCCAG"). These potential therapies have not yet produced significant clinical results.