While most current drugs are designed to interact with proteins, Genta's antisense compound, Genasense, TM acts at the preceding step to halt protein production.
Antisense drugs are small, chemically modified stretches of single-stranded DNA bases.
In many cases, chemotherapy resistance is also associated with overexpression of the Bcl-2 protein . Antisense technology, has been developed to prevent resistance to cancer therapy by inhibiting production of Bcl-2, thereby dramatically increasing the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy.