Recent Research of Aptamer in Target Drug Delivery

The toxicity of anticancer drug limits its clinical applications, nano drug carriers which accumulate and release drugs at the lesion without affecting the normal tissue, can greatly improve the efficacy and reduced toxicity. Target ligands modified drug carrier can enhance active targeting ability, then release the drug into the target cells effectively. Aptamers are kind of nucleic acid molecules which could recognize and bind specific targets. They can be obtained by SELEX(systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) technology in vitro. Aptamers are widespread recognition, easy to modification and good stability, they are called chemical antibodies. As novel target molecules studied in recent years, aptamers have been used in targeted drug delivery.This review described several aptamer targeted drug delivery systems, such as aptamer-drugs, aptamer-liposomes,aptamer-polymer micelles, aptamer-polymeric nanoparticles, aptamer-metal particles and aptamer-branched polymer drug delivery systems. The existing problems and shortcomings of the research hotspots in the current study were also reviewed.