Exploring the Potential of Aptamers in Targeting Neuroinflammation and Neurodegenerative Disorders: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Neuroinflammation is the precursor for several neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs), such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and multiple sclerosis (MS). Targeting neuroinflammation has emerged as a promising strategy to address a wide range of CNS pathologies. These NDDs still present significant challenges in terms of limited and ineffective diagnosis and treatment options, driving the need to explore innovative and novel therapeutic alternatives. Aptamers are single-stranded nucleic acids that offer the potential for addressing these challenges through diagnostic and therapeutic applications. In this review, we summarize diagnostic and therapeutic aptamers for inflammatory biomolecules, as well as the inflammatory cells in NDDs. We also discussed the potential of short nucleotides for Aptamer-Based Targeted Brain Delivery through their unique features and modifications, as well as their ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Moreover, the unprecedented opportunities and substantial challenges of using aptamers as therapeutic agents, such as drug efficacy, safety considerations, and pharmacokinetics, are also discussed. Taken together, this review assesses the potential of aptamers as a pioneering approach for target delivery to the CNS and the treatment of neuroinflammation and NDDs.

Aptamers’ Potential to Fill Therapeutic and Diagnostic Gaps

“…Cancer treatment has also been the focus of many aptamer-based studies [ 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ]. However, other diseases such as neurodegenerative or cardiovascular diseases, among others, have also been targeted in aptamer studies [ 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ]. In addition to the development of aptamers as therapeutic molecules, other notable approaches include the applications of aptamers as biosensors, through the development of aptamer-based devices and platforms for disease diagnosis [ 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 ], and as molecular tools to deliver therapeutic drugs to specific target cells, as well as to improve access to malignant molecules whose inactivation is desirable [ 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ].…”