Background Hepatic steatosis (fatty liver), an early and reversible stage of alcoholic liver disease, is characterized by triglyceride deposition in hepatocytes, that can advance to steatohepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis, and ultimately to hepatocellular carcinoma. In the present work, we studied altered plasma and hepatic lipid metabolome (lipidome) to understand the mechanisms and lipid pattern of early stage alcohol induced-fatty liver. Methods Male Fischer 344 rats were fed 5% alcohol in a Lieber-DeCarli diet. Control rats were pair-fed an equivalent amount of maltose-dextrin. After one month, animals were sacrificed and plasma collected. Livers were excised for morphological, immunohistochemical, and biochemical studies. The lipids from plasma and livers were extracted with methyl-tert-butyl ether and analyzed by 750/800 MHz proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) and phosphorus (31P) NMR spectroscopy on a 600 MHz spectrometer. The NMR data were then subjected to multivariate statistical analysis. Results Hemotoxylin & Eosin and Oil Red O stained liver sections showed significant fatty infiltration. Immunohistochemical analysis of liver sections from ethanol-fed rats showed no inflammation (absence of CD3 positive cells) or oxidative stress (absence of malondialdehyde reactivity or 4-hydroxynonenal positive straining). Cluster analysis and principal component analysis of 1H NMR data of lipid extracts of both plasma and livers showed a significant difference in the lipid metabolome of ethanol-fed vs. control rats. 31P NMR data of liver lipid extracts showed significant changes in phospholipids similar to 1H NMR data. 1H NMR data of plasma and liver reflected several changes while comparison of 1H NMR and 31P NMR data offered a correlation among the phospholipids. Conclusions Our results show that alcohol consumption alters metabolism of cholesterol, triglycerides and phospholipids that could contribute to the development of fatty liver. These studies also indicate that fatty liver precedes oxidative stress and inflammation. The similarities observed in plasma and liver lipid profiles offer a potential methodology for detecting early stage alcohol-induced fatty liver disease by analyzing the plasma lipid profile.

CD44, the primary receptor for hyaluronic acid, plays an important role in tumor growth and metastasis. CD44-hyaluronic acid interactions can be exploited for targeted delivery of anti-cancer agents specifically to cancer cells. Although various splicing variants of CD44 are expressed on the plasma membrane of cancer cells, the hyaluronic acid binding domain (HABD) is highly conserved among the CD44 splicing variants. Using a novel two-step process, we have identified monothiophosphate-modified aptamers (thioaptamers) that specifically bind to the CD44’s HABD with high affinities. Binding affinities of the selected thioaptamers for the HABD were in the range of 180–295 nM, significantly higher affinity than that of hyaluronic acid (Kd > μM range). The selected thioaptamers bound to CD44 positive human ovarian cancer cell lines (SKOV3, IGROV, and A2780), but failed to bind CD44 negative NIH3T3 cell line. Our results indicated that thio substitution at specific positions of the DNA phosphate backbone result in specific and high affinity binding of thioaptamers to CD44. The selected thioaptamers will be of great interest for further development as a targeting or imaging agent to deliver therapeutic payloads for cancer tissues.

The implementation of direct standardization (DS), piecewise direct standardization (PDS), and double-window piecewise direct standardization (DWPDS) instrumental transfer techniques for high-resolution (1)H NMR spectral data was explored. The ability to transfer a multivariate calibration model developed for a "master or target" NMR instrument configuration to seven different ("secondary") NMR instrument configurations was measured. Partial least-squares (PLS) calibration of glucose, glycine, and citrate metabolite relative concentrations in model mixtures following mapping of the secondary instrumental configurations using DS, PDS, or DWPDS instrumental transfer allowed the performance of the different transfer methods to be assessed. Results from these studies suggest that DS and PDS transfer techniques produce similar improvements in the error of prediction compared to each other and provide a significant improvement over standard spectral preprocessing techniques including reference deconvolution and spectral binning. The DS instrumental transfer method produced the largest percent improvement in the predictions of concentrations for these model mixtures but, in general, required that additional transfer calibration standards be used. Limitations of the different instrumental transfer methods with respect to sample subset selection are also discussed.

Aptamers are small, single-stranded oligonucleotides (DNA or RNA) that bind to their target with high specificity and affinity. Although aptamers are analogous to antibodies for a wide range of target recognition and variety of applications, they have significant advantages over antibodies. Since aptamers have recently emerged as a class of biomolecules with an application in a wide array of fields, we need to summarize the latest developments herein. In this review we will discuss about the latest developments in using aptamers in diagnostics, drug delivery and imaging. We begin with diagnostics, discussing the application of aptamers for the detection of infective agents itself, antigens/ toxins (bacteria), biomarkers (cancer), or a combination. The ease of conjugation and labelling of aptamers makes them a potential tool for diagnostics. Also, due to the reduced off-target effects of aptamers, their use as a potential drug delivery tool is emerging rapidly. Hence, we discuss their use in targeted delivery in conjugation with siRNAs, nanoparticles, liposomes, drugs and antibodies. Finally, we discuss about the conjugation strategies applicable for RNA and DNA aptamers for imaging. Their stability and self-assembly after heating makes them superior over protein-based binding molecules in terms of labelling and conjugation strategies.

Aptamers are synthetic ssDNA/RNA molecules that are emerging as novel tools for the development of therapeutics, especially for targeted delivery. Aptamers are comparable to monoclonal antibodies, which are well-established therapeutic molecules, in terms of specificity and affinity to their target. The advantage of aptamers over antibodies includes their high stability, ease of synthesis, less batchto-batch variation, easy chemical modifications that allow different conjugation chemistries, small size for better tissue penetration and low immunogenicity. These advantages make aptamers an important tool for use in therapeutics for targeted delivery. However, aptamers do have some limitations that have hindered their widespread clinical use as a therapeutic agent. Some of their common limitations include serum stability, renal filtration and endocytic escape. Other limitations that are more specific to aptamers include lack of diversity in the aptamer library, nuclease susceptibility and claims of aptamer specificity as well. This book chapter sheds light on these challenges, and using examples, it explains the scientific advancements that have been achieved in overcoming these limitations. We will end this chapter by discussing the use of high-throughput technology, which is the only way of truly industrializing the aptamer technology akin to the development of small molecule drugs.