RNA activation, as a method of regulating gene expression at the transcriptional level, is far less widely used than RNA interference because of the insufficient understanding of the mechanism and the unstable success rate. It is necessary to analyze the failure cases of RNA activation to promote the application of RNA activation. When we validated the saRNAs designed to induce KLK1 expression, we found that saKLK1-374 can upregulate KLK1 expression in prostate tumor cell lines, but failed in normal prostate cell lines. To determine whether the RNA activation of normal cells is difficult only when the target gene is KLK1, we tested p21WAF1/CIP1 as the target gene in RNA activation experiments of normal and cancer prostate cells. Next, to determine whether the above phenomenon exists in other tissues, we used normal and cancerous bladder cells to perform RNA activation experiments with KLK1 and p21WAF1/CIP1 as targets. We have also extended the time from transfection to detection to evaluate whether a longer incubation time can make saRNA upregulate the target genes in normal cells. Fluorescently labeled dsRNA was transfected to evaluate the transfection efficiency, and the expression of Ago2 and IPO8 necessary for RNA activation was also detected. The p21WAF1/CIP1 could be significantly upregulated by saRNA in prostate cancer cells, but not in normal prostate cells. The expression of KLK1 in bladder-derived cell lines was extremely low and could not be induced by saRNA. The p21WAF1/CIP1 was upregulated by saRNA to a higher extent in bladder cancer cells but to a lower extent in normal bladder cells. Prolonging incubation time could not make saRNA induce the expression of target genes in normal cells. Compared with tumor cells used in this study, normal cells had lower transfection efficiency or lower expression of Ago2 and IPO8. Although it has been currently found that normal cell lines in the prostate and bladder might be more difficult to be successfully induced target gene expression by exogenous saRNA than tumor cells due to low transfection efficiency or Ago2 and IPO8 expression, it is not certain that this phenomenon occurs in other types of tissue. However, researchers still need to pay attention to the transfection efficiency and/or the expression levels of Ago2 and IPO8 when conducting RNA activation experiments in normal cells.Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.