Research progress of aptamer drugs for targeted therapy / 医学研究生学报

ABSTRACT

Aptamers,screened by the in vitro process known as Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SELEX),are single stranded DNA/RNA oligonucleotides that can be folded into three dimensional spatialstructure. They can specif-ically recognize the molecular markers on the cell surface. Compared with monoclonal antibodies,aptamers possess similar or even su-perior characteristics,such as high specificity and affinity,easy for modification,excellet chemical stability,non-toxicity and low im-munogenicity. Due to these advantages,aptamers are emerging as a promising tool to targeted delivery of therapeutic drugs into cells,with low toxicity and high efficacy. They can not only be used as therapeutic agent,specific drug carrier,to deliver such as drugs,nan-oparticles,nucleic acids to targeted cells. This review discusses recent advances of aptamers applied for targeted therapy.