Advances in Aptamer Drug Delivery Systems for Treatment of Glioblastoma

Therapeutic strategies for glioblastoma have progressed considerably over recent decades. Despite the development of new biomedical technologies and advances in our understanding of physiology and disease progression, effective drug delivery to brain cancer remains a significant challenge. The challenge is delivering therapeutics to the correct location without losing therapeutics to non-desirable cells as well as overcoming the low permeability posed by the blood-brain barrier. This could be tackled by conjugating a specific targeting agent to the therapeutic or drug delivery system to guide, such as an aptamer. Aptamers are short, single-stranded oligonucleotides with high selectivity and specificity for their targets, making them primed for a vast array of diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Aptamers are powerful molecular tools with the potential to overcome many of the challenges inherent in treating brain-based diseases. Here is discussed the use of aptamers, specifically as drug delivery vehicles, for the treatment of glioblastoma. There are a multitude of drug delivery aptamers in development, each with their own optimized formulation and drug delivery strategy. This review systematically and comprehensively details every drug delivery system that includes aptamers as a glioblastoma therapy that has been published to date.