Aptamer-Based Strategies to Address Challenges in COVID-19 Diagnosis and Treatments

Interdiscip Perspect Infect Dis. 2023 Jul 31;2023:9224815. doi: 10.1155/2023/9224815. eCollection 2023.ABSTRACTCoronavirus disease (COVID-19), a highly contagious and rapidly spreading disease with significant fatality in the elderly population, has swept across the world since 2019. Since its first appearance, the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has undergone multiple mutations, with Omicron as the predominant circulating variant of concern at the moment. The gold standard for diagnosis of COVID-19 by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to detect the virus is laborious and requires well-trained personnel to perform sophisticated procedures. Also, the genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2 that arise regularly could result in false-negative detection. Meanwhile, the current COVID-19 treatments such as conventional medicine, complementary and alternative medicine, passive antibody therapy, and respiratory therapy are associated with adverse effects. Thus, there is an urgent need to discover novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. Over the past 30 years, nucleic acid-based aptamers have gained increasing attention and serve as a promising alternative to the antibodies in the diagnostic and therapeutic fields with their uniqueness of being small, nonimmunogenicity, and thermally stable. Aptamer targeting the SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins or the host receptor proteins represent a powerful to...
Source: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Infectious Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Source Type: research