A new Russian drug based on DNA aptamers makes it possible to visualize glial tumors in the brain with extremely high accuracy. This was reported by the press service of the RSK group of companies.
Glioma is a cancer that develops in glial tissue. Glial tissue is necessary to create a working environment for neurons and plays an auxiliary role, while the proportion of glial cells in the brain is about 40%. A cancerous tumor that develops from glial cells is both the most common and the most dangerous type of brain cancer.
Krasnoyarsk State Medical University specialists, Professor VF Voyno-Yasenetsky (KrasSMU) and colleagues have succeeded in creating DNA aptamers, whereby human glioma can be detected in the brain with near absolute accuracy using a dye.
“Aptamer synthesis is a very simple and inexpensive technology. Once we have chosen the DNA for the target that interests us, we can copy this molecule as many times as we want and put different labels on it. The aptamers obtained in this study only bind to glioma cells, allowing their recognition with absolute accuracy. In this way, aptamers will help simplify and speed up tumor diagnosis. What’s more, short DNA is rapidly degraded in the body: they are “eaten” by special enzymes, so the molecules we present are likely safe not only for mice but also for humans,” Anna Kichkailo, development authors, explained. Experiments show that aptamers bind specifically only to glioma. , because they showed that they recognize a specific region of the transformed tubulin protein in tumor cells.
Fluorescent labels can be attached to the formed molecules. In this case, when aptamers bind to cancer cells, it will be possible to clearly see the foci of the disease with a microscope during operation, which was confirmed in experiments on live mice. This will allow you to remove only the diseased tissue, without touching the healthy one.
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