A Multi-Centered Case-Control Study of Vitiligo Support Groups and Quality of Life.

Background: There is limited research on the association between vitiligo support group membership and patient quality of life (QoL).

Objectives: To explore the association between support groups and QoL in those with vitiligo by evaluating and comparing the QoL of vitiligo support group members and non-support group members.

Methods: Support group members (n=135) and non-support group members (n=129) were recruited from the Global Vitiligo Foundation (GVF), and three academic medical centers respectively.

An Aptamer for Broad Cancer Targeting and Therapy.

Recent advances in chemotherapy treatments are increasingly targeted therapies, with the drug conjugated to an antibody able to deliver it directly to the tumor. As high-affinity chemical ligands that are much smaller in size, aptamers are ideal for this type of drug targeting. Aptamer-highly toxic drug conjugates (ApTDCs) based on the E3 aptamer, selected on prostate cancer cells, target and inhibit prostate tumor growth in vivo.

AptCompare: optimized de novo motif discovery of RNA aptamers via HTS-SELEX.

Summary: High-throughput sequencing can enhance the analysis of aptamer libraries generated by the Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment. Robust analysis of the resulting sequenced rounds is best implemented by determining a ranked consensus of reads following the processing by multiple aptamer detection algorithms. While several such approaches have been developed to this end, their installation and implementation is problematic.

Tunable cytotoxic aptamer-drug conjugates for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Therapies that can eliminate both local and metastatic prostate tumor lesions while sparing normal organ tissue are desperately needed. With the goal of developing an improved drug-targeting strategy, we turned to a new class of targeted anticancer therapeutics: aptamers conjugated to highly toxic chemotherapeutics. Cell selection for aptamers with prostate cancer specificity yielded the E3 aptamer, which internalizes into prostate cancer cells without targeting normal prostate cells.

Targeted Delivery of Auristatin-Modified Toxins to Pancreatic Cancer Using Aptamers.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal malignancies. Treatment with the first-line agent, gemcitabine, is often unsuccessful because it, like other traditional chemotherapeutic agents, is non-specific, resulting in off-target effects that necessitate administration of subcurative doses. Alternatively, monomethyl auristatin E (MMAE) and monomethyl auristatin F (MMAF) are highly toxic small molecules that require ligand-targeted delivery.

Effect of Chemical Modifications on Aptamer Stability in Serum.

There is increasing interest in the use of aptamers for the development of therapeutics. However, as oligonucleotides, aptamers are susceptible to nuclease degradation; poor serum stability is likely to negatively affect in vivo function. Modified nucleotides have been used to thwart nuclease degradation.

Improved Synthesis and In Vitro Evaluation of an Aptamer Ribosomal Toxin Conjugate.

Delivery of toxins, such as the ricin A chain, Pseudomonas exotoxin, and gelonin, using antibodies has had some success in inducing specific toxicity in cancer treatments. However, these antibody-toxin conjugates, called immunotoxins, can be bulky, difficult to express, and may induce an immune response upon in vivo administration. We previously reported delivery of a recombinant variant of gelonin (rGel) by the full-length prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) binding aptamer, A9, to potentially circumvent some of these problems.