For Immediate Release
New Aptamer-Based Approach Delivers microRNA Therapeutic That Targets Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease
Contact: Kathryn Ryan
914-740-2250
kryan@liebertpub.com
New Rochelle, NY, June 3, 2015— Researchers have shown that a novel delivery strategy can efficiently introduce a functional microRNA that has anti-cancer and angiogenic activities into two different types of cells—breast cancer cells to inhibit tumor growth and metastasis, and cells that line blood vessels to protect against atherosclerosis. The overexpression of miR-126 using a universal aptamer delivery approach is described in an article in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers. The article is available free on the Nucleic Acid Therapeutics website until July 3, 2015.
Jan-H Rohde and Stefanie Dimmeler, Goethe University (Frankfurt, Germany) and Julia Weigand and Beatrix Suess, Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, linked the short noncoding RNA miR-126, which is essential for the growth of blood vessels, to an aptamer, a short nucleic acid sequence that delivers the therapeutic microRNA inside target cells. The researchers describe how they formed an aptamer chimera by linking a precursor of miR-126 to an aptamer of the transferrin receptor, which is present on the surface of both normal endothelial cells and cancer cells. Data demonstrating the efficient uptake of the aptamer and processing of the precursor miR-126 to produce a functionally active microRNA are presented in the article “A Universal Aptamer Chimera for the Delivery of Functional microRNA-126.”
“This innovative strategy demonstrates for the first time an aptamer-based modular delivery of microRNA in endothelial and breast cancer cells,” says Executive Editor Graham C. Parker, PhD, The Carman and Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI.
About the Journal
Nucleic Acid Therapeutics is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly in print and online that focuses on cutting-edge basic research, therapeutic applications, and drug development using nucleic acids or related compounds to alter gene expression. The Journal is under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Bruce A. Sullenger, PhD, Duke Translational Research Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, and Executive Editor Graham C. Parker, PhD. Nucleic Acid Therapeutics is the official journal of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Nucleic Acid Therapeutics website.
About the Society
The Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society is an open, non-profit forum to foster academia- and industry-based research and development of oligonucleotide therapeutics. The society brings together the expertise from different angles of oligonucleotide research to create synergies and to bring the field of oligonucleotides to its full therapeutic potential.
About the Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Human Gene Therapy, ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies, Applied In Vitro Toxicology, and DNA and Cell Biology. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm’s 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.