Aptamers for pharmaceuticals and their application in environmental analytics

Abstract

Aptamers are single-stranded DNA or RNA oligonucleotides, which are able to bind with high affinity and specificity to their target. This property is used for a multitude of applications, for instance as molecular recognition elements in biosensors and other assays. Biosensor application of aptamers offers the possibility for fast and easy detection of environmental relevant substances. Pharmaceutical residues, deriving from human or animal medical treatment, are found in surface, ground, and drinking water. At least the whole range of frequently administered drugs can be detected in noticeable concentrations. Biosensors and assays based on aptamers as specific recognition elements are very convenient for this application because aptamer development is possible for toxic targets. Commonly used biological receptors for biosensors like enzymes or antibodies are mostly unavailable for the detection of pharmaceuticals. This review describes the research activities of aptamer and sensor developments for pharmaceutical detection, with focus on environmental applications.

Aptamer-based biosensor for label-free detection of ethanolamine by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy

“…Thus, aptamers become important components in the design of biosensors, and aptamer-based sensors have been widely usded for targeting small molecule [22], such as cocaine [23], organophosphorus pesticides [24,25], heavy metals [26], pharmaceuticals [27,28], due to the considerable advantages, such as thermal stability, simpler preparation, lower-priced production cost, high selectivity and sensitivity for targets [22,29]. Until now, EA aptamer, one of the smallest aptamer targets so far, has been in vitro-selected [30], but few aptamer sensors have been constructed for EA detection.…”

Molecular recognition between insulin and dextran encapsulated gold nanoparticles

“…However, these approaches require expensive antibodies. Thus, cost‐effective synthetic oligonucleotide‐based aptamers, which possess binding affinity toward insulin, have been used as alternatives in the development of sensing methods (Strehlitz et al ., ; Pu et al ., ; Zhang et al ., ). When aptamers were used as the probes and matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI‐MS) was employed as the detection tool, the detection limit toward insulin in serum samples was as low as 3 nM as reported previously (De Groot et al ., ).…”

Terbium ion-coordinated carbon dots for fluorescent aptasensing of adenosine 5′-triphosphate with unmodified gold nanoparticles

“…Aptamers, selected from random-sequence nucleic acid libraries by exponential enrichment (SELEX) process, are functional nucleic acids with highly specific recognition capabilities toward different targets including small molecules, metal ions and proteins (Crivian-Gaita and Thompson, 2016;Strehlitz et al, 2012). Importantly, the aptamers undergo the conformational changes once target binding (Tan et al, 2013;Xiong et al, 2014).…”