Nucleic Acid Aptamer-Guided Cancer Therapeutics and Diagnostics: the Next Generation of Cancer Medicine

Abstract

Conventional anticancer therapies, such as chemo- and/or radio-therapy are often unable to completely eradicate cancers due to abnormal tumor microenvironment, as well as increased drug/radiation resistance. More effective therapeutic strategies for overcoming these obstacles are urgently in demand. Aptamers, as chemical antibodies that bind to targets with high affinity and specificity, are a promising new and novel agent for both cancer diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Aptamer-based cancer cell targeting facilitates the development of active targeting in which aptamer-mediated drug delivery could provide promising anticancer outcomes. This review is to update the current progress of aptamer-based cancer diagnosis and aptamer-mediated active targeting for cancer therapy in vivo, exploring the potential of this novel form of targeted cancer therapy.

Modularized Extracellular Vesicles: The Dawn of Prospective Personalized and Precision Medicine

“…The composition of cancer‐derived EVs (C‐EVs) is markedly changed compared to EVs from healthy cells, and C‐EVs can therefore be used as diagnostic biomarkers of cancers 25, 26. As key players in the field of liquid biopsies, C‐EVs are potential biological markers that can detect the existence of tumor cells, even in very early stages, and can be used to monitor the progression of malignant tumors 27, 28.…”

Label-free fluorimetric detection of CEA using carbon dots derived from tomato juice

“…In addition, aptamers generally exhibit high specificity and affinity for their targets, and their structural flexibility allows for adaptation of undergoing significant conformational changes once aptamers and their targets specifically bind with each other (Blind and Blank, 2015;Nielsen et al, 2010). Hence, these attractive superiorities potentiate them as ideal biosensing molecules (Billinge et al, 2014;Kim et al, 2015;Ara et al, 2014;Song et al, 2014), and aptamer have been exploited in biorecognition applications of proteins, cancer cells and cancer medicine Xiang et al, 2015;Ghasemi et al, 2015;Kim and Gu, 2014). Currently, various types of nanomaterials have been employed to provide fluorescence response and construct ultrasensitive biosensors with the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology (Min et al, 2011;Zhang, 2012).…”

A fluorescent aptasensor based on a DNA pyramid nanostructure for ultrasensitive detection of ochratoxin A

“…Aptamers are single-stranded DNA or RNA nucleic acids artificially produced by an in vitro procedure named SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) [9,10]. Aptamers interact with a variety of targets, ranging from metal ions to amino acids and entire cells with high affinity and specificity [11,12].…”