Aptamers for Bacterial Infection Diagnosis

The current medications against bacterial agents are losing their efficacy due to increasing and even further spreading drug resistance. Nowadays, there is an urgent need to discover novel diagnostic tools against bacterial infection. With years of ample experience in aptamer development, Creative Biolabs has won a good reputation in providing high-quality anti-bacterial component aptamer development services for research. The selected aptamers, characterized by high specificity and affinity to their target molecule, will be extensively exploited in diagnostic applications.

Introduction

Early detection of infectious diseases is of primary importance for its management. The conventional methods of diagnosis, including microbiological methods (isolation, growth, and microscopy of pathogens), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and serological methods, suffer from turn-around times of 24 h or even longer. The challenge for future diagnostics is to develop portable devices that require little expertise to perform. Current technology development is moving in this direction with lateral flow immunology tests and portable PCR machines. The former can often be readily used and interpreted by an untrained individual but the latter still requires trained personal to operate. Diagnostics based on aptamers stand out as promising options for rapid, cost-effective, and specific detection of pathogens.

Fig.1 Aptamers against bacterial and viral human pathogens. (Zimbres, 2013)

Aptamers and Bacterial Infections

For human beings, common bacterial infections include diseases caused by Staphylococcus Aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Escherichia coli, Streptococcus pyogenes, Bacillus Anthracis, Vibrio alginolyticus, Helicobacter pylori, and so forth. For instance, the use of biosensors containing nucleic acid aptamers that bind targets with high affinity and specificity could accelerate sepsis diagnosis. Aptamers targeting the ubiquitous bacterial peptidoglycan bind to four gram-positive and seven gram-negative bacterial sepsis agents with high binding efficiency. These aptamers could be used in combination as biological recognition elements in the development of biosensors. Aptamers can be further labeled with different radionucleotides such as ^99mTc, ¹⁸F, and ³²P to test their performance for in vivo identification of specific bacterial infection by scintigraphy in animal models.

Services at Creative Biolabs

Creative Biolabs is equipped with the following detection systems and can provide one-stop anti-bacteria aptamer solutions for global clients. For instance, due to the strong affinity of aptamers to target bacteria and the amplification of signals by platinum nanoparticle probes with high catalytic activity, rapid and accurate detection of bacteria could be achieved by aptamer-microfluidic chip. For customized services or products, Please contact us for more information.

• Aptamer-Nanoparticle (Apt-NP) System
• Aptamer-Microfluidic System
• Aptamer-Quantum Dots System
• Molecular Beacon Aptamer System
• Fluorescent Aptamer System

Reference

1. Zimbres, F. M.; et al. Aptamers: novel molecules as diagnostic markers in bacterial and viral infections? BioMed research international. 2013, 2013.

For Research Use Only.