Aptamers evolved from live cells as effective molecular probes for cancer study

TLDR

The study develops a cell‑based aptamer selection strategy that exploits molecular differences between cell types to identify surface signatures on target cells. The authors employ a straightforward, reproducible cell‑based selection process that can be performed without prior knowledge of target molecules. The selected aptamers bind leukemia cells with nanomolar‑to‑picomolar affinity, recognize target cells in mixed bone marrow aspirates and related cancer cells in clinical specimens, and show promise for cancer diagnosis and biomarker discovery.

Abstract

Using cell-based aptamer selection, we have developed a strategy to use the differences at the molecular level between any two types of cells for the identification of molecular signatures on the surface of targeted cells. A group of aptamers have been generated for the specific recognition of leukemia cells. The selected aptamers can bind to target cells with an equilibrium dissociation constant ( K d ) in the nanomolar-to-picomolar range. The cell-based selection process is simple, fast, straightforward, and reproducible, and, most importantly, can be done without prior knowledge of target molecules. The selected aptamers can specifically recognize target leukemia cells mixed with normal human bone marrow aspirates and can also identify cancer cells closely related to the target cell line in real clinical specimens. The cell-based aptamer selection holds a great promise in developing specific molecular probes for cancer diagnosis and cancer biomarker discovery.