title: Tumor-targeted drug delivery with aptamers.
abstract: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death around the world. Tumor-targeted drug delivery is one of the major areas in cancer research. Aptamers exhibit many desirable properties for tumor-targeted drug delivery, such as ease of selection and synthesis, high binding affinity and specificity, low immunogenicity, and versatile synthetic accessibility. Over the last several years, aptamers have quickly become a new class of targeting ligands for drug delivery applications. In this review, we will discuss in detail about aptamer-based delivery of chemotherapy drugs (e.g. doxorubicin, docetaxel, daunorubicin, and cisplatin), toxins (e.g. gelonin and various photodynamic therapy agents), and a variety of small interfering RNAs. Although the results are promising which warrants enthusiasm for aptamer-based drug delivery, tumor homing of aptamer-based conjugates after systemic injection has only been achieved in one report. Much remains to be done before aptamer-based drug delivery can reach clinical trials and eventually the day-to-day management of cancer patients. Therefore, future directions and challenges in aptamer-based drug delivery are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53705-2275, USA.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cai
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000627:therapeutic use; D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D001483:Base Sequence; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000628:therapy*; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering