Strategies for developing long-lasting therapeutic nucleic acid aptamer targeting circulating protein: The present and the future.

Aptamers are short, single-stranded DNA or RNA oligonucleotide sequences that can bind specific targets. The molecular weight of aptamers (<20 kDa) is lower than the renal filtration threshold (30∼50 kDa), resulting in very short half-lives , which limit their druggability. The development of long-lasting modification approaches for aptamers can help address the druggability bottleneck of aptamers.