Applications of aptamers in pharmaceutical analysis: Comprehensively empowering drug development

Pharmaceutical analysis plays a pivotal role in every stage of drug development, from target identification and lead compound screening to clinical validation. Traditional affinity-based analytical approaches face significant limitations, especially when addressing complex intracellular or membrane-associated drug targets. These challenges include difficulty of optimal bioactive target molecule identification, complicated signal transduction steps and limited physiological relevance of target models. As a novel molecular recognition tool, nucleic acid aptamers offer high affinity, specificity, chemical stability, and ease of synthesis and modification. Their ability to evolve from randomized nucleic acid libraries via SELEX makes them uniquely suited for analytical applications. Aptamers enable improved drug target analysis, functional screening, biomarker detection, and in situ monitoring within biological systems. This review highlights the growing importance of aptamers in pharmaceutical analysis and their potential to empower the full drug development pipeline through more accurate, adaptable, and high-resolution analytical strategies. Furthermore, it explores the opportunities and challenges associated with aptamers in pharmaceutical analysis, aiming to broaden their utility and provide insights into disease mechanism research and drug discovery.