Recent progress of aptamer‒drug conjugates in cancer therapy

Aptamers are single-stranded DNA or RNA sequences that can specifically bind with the target protein or molecule via specific secondary structures. Compared to antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), aptamer‒drug conjugate (ApDC) is also an efficient, targeted drug for cancer therapy with a smaller size, higher chemical stability, lower immunogenicity, faster tissue penetration, and facile engineering. Despite all these advantages, several key factors have delayed the clinical translation of ApDC, such as in vivo off-target effects and potential safety issues. In this review, we highlight the most recent progress in the development of ApDC and discuss solutions to the problems noted above.

Pharmaceutical applications of framework nucleic acids

DNA is a biological polymer that encodes and stores genetic information in all living organism. Particularly, the precise nucleobase pairing inside DNA is exploited for the self-assembling of nanostructures with defined size, shape and functionality. These DNA nanostructures are known as framework nucleic acids (FNAs) for their skeleton-like features. Recently, FNAs have been explored in various fields ranging from physics, chemistry to biology. In this review, we mainly focus on the recent progress of FNAs in a pharmaceutical perspective. We summarize the advantages and applications of FNAs for drug discovery, drug delivery and drug analysis. We further discuss the drawbacks of FNAs and provide an outlook on the pharmaceutical research direction of FNAs in the future.

Advances in the use of lactic acid bacteria as mucosal delivery vectors of therapeutic molecules / 生物工程学报

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are generally recognized as safe food-grade microorganisms and are widely used in food production, preservation, and as probiotics to promote human health. Given the need to develop effective drug delivery strategies, LAB have become attractive live vehicles for the oral, intranasal and vaginal delivery of therapeutic molecules. Being live and safe organisms, LAB are able to directly produce and deliver target proteins for therapeutic purpose, which remarkably reduces the cost for drug production. To date, LAB have been used to deliver a variety of functional proteins to mucosal tissues for the treatment of various diseases. This review summarized the development and application of LAB as mucosal delivery vectors in the last 20 years to provide references for future clinical research.