Arpan Adak, Sakasi Halder, Soumya Chakraborty, Dibya Dey, Surjya Toran Maiti and Dr. Dhrubo Jyoti Sen
Aptamers are a new class of biomolecules with a wide range of potential applications in medicine and other fields. Aptamers are short, single-stranded DNA or RNA oligonucleotides that can bind to a variety of targets with high affinity and specificity. Aptamers are generated through a process called systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX), in which a library of random oligonucleotides is repeatedly incubated with the target molecule and selected for binding. The oligonucleotides that bind to the target molecule are amplified and used to create a new library in the next round of SELEX. This process is repeated until a library of oligonucleotides with high affinity and specificity for the target molecule is obtained. Aptamers have several advantages over antibodies, including their ability to be generated against any type of target, their small size and ease of synthesis, and their stability in a variety of environments. Aptamers have a wide range of potential applications, including in diagnostics, therapeutics, drug delivery, and bio sensing. For example, aptamers can be used to develop new diagnostic tests for cancer, infectious diseases, and cardiovascular disease. They can also be used to develop new drugs and therapies for a variety of diseases like development of drugs to treat cancer, macular degeneration, and thrombosis. Aptamers are also being investigated for use in drug delivery and bio sensing. In drug delivery, aptamers can be used to deliver drugs and other therapeutic agents to specific cells and tissues. This can help to reduce the side effects of drugs and improve their efficacy. In bio sensing, aptamers can be used to develop biosensors that can detect a variety of molecules and organisms. This can be used to develop new diagnostic tests and to monitor the progress of diseases.