G. Thomas Caltagirone, Ph.D.
President & CEO, APTAGEN Labs, Jacobus

How has the aptamer technology evolved in the last decades in terms of discovery, selection, synthesis, and purification? Are there still unresolved issues?
Over the decades, many different selection strategies and methodologies have been developed. Recently, many innovative partitioning strategies have been applied to separate binders from nonbinders, from magnetic force separation techniques to single-particle sorting techniques. We see a lot of innovation in reducing the number of rounds of screening during the selection process, as well as accommodating different library and target presentations to satisfy requirements for specific use cases. Synthesis and purification has been relatively stable with regard to phosphoramidite chemistry and purification by chromatography or polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.

Are current aptamer discovery platforms efficient? What improvements are needed?
The aptamer discovery process is still time-consuming and has not been fully automated. The average execution of aptame ...