Moscow. 10 September. INTERFAX.RU – An international group of scientists has optimized the aptamer molecule (nucleotide sequence), shortening it by more than half to increase selectivity in cancer diagnostics, the SB RAS publication Science in Siberia reports. The results of the study are published in the journal Molecular Therapy – Nucleic Acids.
It is noted that single-stranded DNA molecules designed in the laboratory – aptamers – act as synthetic analogs of antibodies and bind to target cells, making it possible to recognize and detect, for example, cancer cells.
Scientists of the Federal Research Center “Krasnoyarsk Scientific Center of the SB RAS” together with colleagues from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Finland, Germany, Canada, Japan and the USA solved the difficult problem of optimizing the aptamer for the diagnosis of cancer cells. “Unlike its predecessor, the new sequence consists not of 80, but of 35 nucleotides,” the message says.
This length turned out to be optimal and made it possible to improve the binding properties of the molecule with cancer cells due to its greater specificity to the protein target.
Before cutting off the molecule, specialists created a three-dimensional model of it. For programming and calculation, the resources of several world scientific laboratories were used, including the supercomputer center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
To demonstrate that the truncated aptamer binds to cancer cells, the researchers tested its effect on stained lung tumor tissues obtained from people with the disease.
“The new modification of the aptamer binds with higher accuracy to lung tumor cells, but does not bind to healthy tissues. The reason for this was an increase in the binding energy of the molecule and a reduction in options for the molecular recognition process due to a decrease in length,” the message says.
