title: Advances in aptamers.
abstract: Aptamers are nucleic acid sequences synthesized through in vitro selection and amplification technique, possessing a broader range of applications in therapeutics, biosensing, diagnostics, and research. Aptamers offer a number of advantages over their antibodies counterpart, one of them is their ability to undergo chemical derivatization to increase their life in the body fluids and bioavailability in animals. Although aptamers were discovered in 1990s, they have become one of the most widely investigated molecules, with a huge number of publications in the last decade. This article presents an overview of the advancements that have been made in aptamers. We mainly focused on articles published since 2005.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, Comsats Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan. mirwah2000@yahoo.de
authors.forename: Muhammad Ali
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Syed
authors.forename: Saima
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pervaiz
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000906:Antibodies / Q000627:therapeutic use; D000925:Anticoagulants / Q000627:therapeutic use; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000191:economics / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D020868:Gene Silencing; D006801:Humans; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D011328:Prions / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors; D052156:SELEX Aptamer Technique; D014780:Viruses / Q000145:classification
chemical_list: D000906:Antibodies; D000925:Anticoagulants; D000998:Antiviral Agents; D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide; D011328:Prions