Tatiana Abakumova, Olga Sergeeva and Polina Vetosheva from Skoltech have co-authored a paper “Reactive oxygen species-responsive RNA interference” that has been recently published in Chemical Communications journal. Due to oxidative instability, arylboronic acids are not compatible with the solid-phase synthesis of nucleic acids. The authors of the paper solved this problem and, based on these findings, developed siRNA prodrugs activated in the presence of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in vivo. These prodrugs can be used for specific targeting of ROS-rich cancer cells. Full text of the paper is available here.