Journal
NUCLEIC ACID THERAPEUTICS
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC
DOI: 10.1089/nat.2021.0091
Keywords
aptamers; neurodegenerative diseases; nucleic acid therapeutics
Funding
- Center for Innovation in Brain Science (CIBS) at the University of Arizona
- University of Missouri School of Medicine
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) are characterized by progressive deterioration of neural structures, leading to cognitive or motor impairment. Effective therapies for common NDs such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease are still lacking. This study explores the development of aptamers for targeting proteins associated with NDs and their potential applications in imaging, protein detection, and quantification, accelerating their clinical use for diagnosis and therapy.
Neurodegeneration is a progressive deterioration of neural structures leading to cognitive or motor impairment of the affected patient. There is still no effective therapy for any of the most common neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. Although NDs exhibit distinct clinical characteristics, many are characterized by the accumulation of misfolded proteins or peptide fragments in the brain and/or spinal cord. The presence of similar inclusion bodies in patients with diverse NDs provides a rationale for developing therapies directed at overlapping disease mechanisms. A novel targeting strategy involves the use of aptamers for therapeutic development. Aptamers are short nucleic acid ligands able to recognize molecular targets with high specificity and high affinity. Despite the fact that several academic groups have shown that aptamers have the potential to be used in therapeutic and diagnostic applications, their clinical translation is still limited. In this study, we describe aptamers that have been developed against proteins relevant to NDs, including prion protein and amyloid beta (A beta), cell surface receptors and other cytoplasmic proteins. This review also describes advances in the application of these aptamers in imaging, protein detection, and protein quantification, and it provides insights about their accelerated clinical use for disease diagnosis and therapy.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available