Recently, the research team led by Yang Zifeng in the TCM and Western medicine integrated prevention and treatment group of the SKLRD published a perspective article with the title of “Aptamer-Based Antibacterial and Antiviral Therapy against Infectious Diseases” online in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry of American Chemical Society (IF=7.446).

Aptamer refers to single-chain DNA or RNA oligonucleotides segments gained from nucleic acid molecular bank with the in vitro screening technology. These segments can integrate with various targets (including ions, small molecules, proteins, tissues, cells, even bacteria, viruses and parasites) with a high sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, aptamer is also considered as a highly potential anti-body substitute, which is also called chemical anti-body and can be applied in the quick detection and treatment of pathogenic microorganism infection such as bacteria and virus. In this paper, the author has systematically summarized the latest research progress of anti-bacteria and virus therapy based on aptamer, which covered nearly 150 cases of anti-infection aptamer for 15 major categories of common pathogen, which showed distinctive pharmacodynamic effects for the pathogenic invasion, enzymatic activity, virus copying, etc. of pathogens. This paper also detailed the drug delivery and controlled release strategy guided by aptamer, and conducted a perspective analysis of the challenges and solution in the clinical application of aptamer drugs, such as optimization of screening process, post-screening decoration and target drug delivery.

Aptamer drugs show low immunogenicity and high tissue penetration and can effectively resist some highly drug tolerant bacteria strains and biological membranes, which are a great supplement to the existing anti-infection drugs. It has been discovered in recent researches that aptamer can target the receptor binding domain of spinous glycoprotein of SARS-Cov-2 and can effectively block the virus invasion as a rival of the ACE2 receptor at the surface of cells. The publication of this paper has provided a new perspective for the research and development of aptamer drugs and new ideas for the treatment strategies against new and sudden outbreaks of infectious diseases, particularly Covid-19 and avian influenza.