Advances and perspectives in cell-specific aptamers

Nucleic acid aptamers, generated by an in vitro selection procedure named SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential enrichment), have been popularly used in various biomedical implementations so far. An adaptation of the conventional SELEX practice to whole living cells was referred to as cell-SELEX, which is very promising in ample sophisticated analytical, therapeutic and diagnostic applications. The current review article would like to provide a survey of contemporary developments in cell-specific aptamers, including methodology, applications and optimization of cell-SELEX.