Aptamers: promising tool for disease diagnosis and treatment

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Aptamers are short, single-stranded DNA or RNA (ssDNA or ssRNA) biomolecules that can selectively attach with specific receptors, including proteins, peptides, carbohydrates, small molecules, hazardous chemicals, and living cells. In the last ten years, aptamers have begun to move away from fundamental research into a variety of industrial applications. The creation of diagnostics is more common than the development of clinical applications since improving the in vivo stability and pharmacokinetics of aptamers for diagnostic tests doesn’t require significant modification. Based on the increased attention, the efficacy of generating aptamers for commercially appealing targets has improved as a result of advances in vitro selection technology `Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SELEX). Many diseases, including Mycobacterium TB, Treponema pallidum, Novel Coronavirus, HIV, Mucor, and others, revealed substantial menace to people’s well-being and placed significant socioeconomic encumbrance on society. Hence, the initial, as well as precise diagnosis of the pathogen, is crucial for prompt and successful therapy. Due to a lack of reliable probes for identifying the biological markers of infections, detecting human infectious ailments at the molecular as well as nanoscale has been extraordinarily perplexing up to this point. Via the selective growth of ligands by exponential enrichment, a group of plastic oligonucleotides with high specificity and sensitivity known as aptamers are tested in vitro (SELEX). The range of aptamer application situations has expanded significantly with the continued advancement of SELEX-based aptamer screening technologies. This paper reviews the evolution of nucleic acid aptamers in biomedicine with a particular emphasis on how they are used to diagnose infectious diseases. A growing number of pharmaceutical aptamers are currently the subject of preclinical studies or clinical trials. This article discusses the creation and evaluation of therapeutic aptamers for the treatment of various illnesses, including coronavirus. However, the momentous state of aptamer technology suffers from several technical constraints that hinder the passage of innovative aptamers into the clinic and make the aptamer business harder. This review primarily focuses on approaches to overcome obstacles impeding the widespread deployment of aptamers in diagnosis and therapy, as well as tactics that may greatly expand the range of aptamer use and provide future directions to several researchers.