Post-SELEX chemical optimization of a trypanosome-specific RNA aptamer.

African trypanosomes are the causative agent of sleeping sickness. The therapeutics used to control and treat the disease are very ineffective and thus, the development of improved drugs is urgently needed. Recently, new strategies for the design of novel trypanocidals have been put forward.

Calpain counteracts mechanosensitive apoptosis of vascular smooth muscle cells in vitro and in vivo.

Mechanical forces contribute to vascular remodeling processes. Elevated mechanical stress causes apoptosis of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) within the media. This study examined the role of the cystein protease calpain in force-induced vascular cell apoptosis and its effect on injury-induced vascular remodeling processes.

Combining SELEX and the yeast three-hybrid system for in vivo selection and classification of RNA aptamers.

Aptamers are small nucleic acid ligands that bind to their targets with specificity and high affinity. They are generated by a combinatorial technology, known as SELEX. This in vitro approach uses iterative cycles of enrichment and amplification to select binders from nucleic acid libraries of high complexity.

Serum-stable RNA aptamers to an invariant surface domain of live African trypanosomes.

African trypanosomes are extracellular blood parasites that cause sleeping sickness in humans and Nagana in cattle. The therapeutics used to control and treat these diseases are very ineffective and thus, the development of new drugs is urgently needed. We have previously suggested to use trypanosome-specific RNA aptamers as tools for the development of novel trypanocidal compounds.

In vitro selection of high-affinity nucleic acid ligands to parasite target molecules.

The logic of using nucleic acids as pharmaceutical reagents is in part based on their capacity to interact with high affinity and specificity with other biological components. Considerable progress has been made over the past 10 years in the development of nucleic acid-based drug molecules using a variety of different technologies. One approach is a combinatorial technology that involves an iterative Darwinian-type in vitro evolution process, which has been termed SELEX for 'systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment'.

Targeting the variable surface of African trypanosomes with variant surface glycoprotein-specific, serum-stable RNA aptamers.

African trypanosomes cause sleeping sickness in humans and Nagana in cattle. The parasites multiply in the blood and escape the immune response of the infected host by antigenic variation. Antigenic variation is characterized by a periodic change of the parasite protein surface, which consists of a variant glycoprotein known as variant surface glycoprotein (VSG).