Aptamers: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Applications

Abstract

Nucleic acids that can bind with high affinity and specificity to target molecules are called "aptamers". Aptamers are single-stranded nucleic acids that directly inhibit a protein's function by folding into a specific three-dimensional structure that dictates high-affinity binding to the targeted protein. Aptamers exhibit significant advantages relative to protein therapeutics in terms of size, synthetic accessibility, and modification by medicinal chemistry. Despite these properties, aptamers have been slow to reach the marketplace, with only one aptamer-based drug receiving approval so far. Recently, aptamers constitute a new class of oligonucleotides that have gained therapeutic importance and pegaptanib is the first approved aptamer drug that is class of oligonucleotides and is often referred to as 'chemical antibodies. The development of pegaptanib is looked at for the challenges faced in converting aptamers into therapeutic molecules. Because they inhibit the activity of existing proteins directly, aptamers are more similar to a monoclonal antibody or small molecule drugs than to antisense compounds, and this property greatly increases the number of clinical indications that are potentially treatable by nucleic acid-based compounds.reach specificity and considerable affinity to target molecules,