Screening Platform toward New Anti-HIV Aptamers Set on Molecular Docking and Fluorescence Quenching Techniques

By using a new rapid screening platform set on molecular docking simulations and fluorescence quenching techniques, three new anti-HIV aptamers targeting the viral surface glycoprotein 120 (gp120) were selected, synthesized, and assayed. The use of the short synthetic fluorescent peptide V35-Fluo mimicking the V3 loop of gp120, as the molecular target for fluorescence-quenching binding affinity studies, allowed one to measure the binding affinities of the new aptamers for the HIV-1 gp120 without the need to obtain and purify the full recombinant gp120 protein. The almost perfect correspondence between the calculated Kd and the experimental EC50 on HIV-infected cells confirmed the reliability of the platform as an alternative to the existing methods for aptamer selection and measuring of aptamer-protein equilibria.