New insight into clinical development of nucleic acid aptamers.

Nucleic acid-based aptamers have been shown as high-affinity ligands and potential antagonists of disease-associated proteins. Aptamers, isolated from combinatorial libraries by an iterative in vitro selection process, discriminate between closely related targets and are characterized by high specificity and low toxicity thus representing a valid alternative to antibodies to target specific proteins of biomedical interest. Moreover, they are non-immunogenic and can be easily stabilized by chemical modifications thus expanding their therapeutic potential. Here, we will focus on the structural and functional features of aptamers that have entered the clinical development pipeline together with those aptamers holding great potential as therapeutics in preclinical studies. The future perspectives of aptamers as therapeutics will be discussed as well.