Anti-VEGF DNA-based aptamers in cancer therapeutics and diagnostics

The vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) family andits receptors play fundamental roles not only in physiolo-gical but also in pathological angiogenesis, characteristic ofcancer progression. Aiming at finding putative treatmentsfor several malignancies, various small molecules, anti-bodies, or proteinbased drugs have been evaluated in vi-tro and in vivo as VEGF inhibitors, providing efficientagents approved for clinical use. Due to the high clinicalimportance of VEGF, also a great number of antiVEGFnucleic acidbased aptamers—that is, oligonucleotides ableto bind with high affinity and specificity a selected biolo-gical target—have been developed as promising agents inanticancer strategies. Notable research efforts have beenmade in optimization processes of the identified aptamers,searching for increased target affinity and/or bioactivity byexploring structural analogues of the lead compounds. Thisreview is focused on recent studies devoted to the devel-opment of DNAbased aptamers designed to target VEGF.Their therapeutic potential as well as their significance inthe construction of highly selective biosensors is here discussed.