Independent Online Edition > Science & Technology: "Imagine a treatment for cancer, a cure for infectious diseases such as Aids, or maybe an effective therapy for blindness or a lethal brain disease. Now imagine that one breakthrough is responsible for all this medical hope.

The breakthrough is RNA interference (RNAi), which some scientists believe could be the biggest advance in healthcare since the development of antibiotics. There is barely an area of medicine that may not be touched by future advances in RNAi - a technique for switching off genes selectively and precisely.
RNAi was only formally recognised in 1998 but over the past few years it has emerged as one of the hottest developments in the field of medical science. Yet another international conference on RNAi (titled RNAi Europe) is planned at the end of September in Prague."