Aptamer-Based Medical Devices

Abstract

Medical devices have undergone an evolution over thousands of years with the intention to improve the health of people. Aptamers are single-stranded nucleotides that can specifically bind to their targets. They are promising alternatives of antibodies in the field of medical devices owing to the property of specific binding to their targets, as well as the advantages such as easy synthesis and modification, chemical stability, low immunogenicity, and competitive cost, etc. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, there are no aptamer-based medical devices officially approved in the market. Therefore, in this chapter, we first introduced the definition, history, and market of medical devices. Then, some potentially prototypical aptamer-based medical devices related clinical trials, patents, and papers were introduced from two aspects according to their application in "diagnosis" and "therapies," respectively. Finally, we proposed our perspectives and insights for the development of aptamerbased medical devices.