Conferenciant:
Maxim V. Berezovski, Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences and leads the Bioanalytical and Molecular Interaction Laboratory in University of Ottawa
Resum:
In the presentation I describe a general approach, which combines development of anti-tumor aptamers, identification of tumor biomarkers, aptamer-assisted fluorescence-guided surgery (AptaFGS) and detection of circulating tumor cells. In two examples, I show how we selected DNA aptamers binding specifically to postoperative human glioblastoma (brain cancer) and adenocarcinoma (lung cancer) primary tumors, but not to healthy brain and lung cells; determined three-dimensional structure of our lead aptamers; isolated and identified protein targets with biological mass spectrometry. We formulated a tumor specific aptamer spray and applied it during surgery. Main benefits are that the procedure does not require systematic administration of the drug into the circulatory system and involves a few simple steps with no waiting time after the spray application. These bring significant help for a surgeon who needs to distinguish tumor and healthy tissues during surgery. Largely, my study demonstrates the power of synthetic affinity ligands targeting tumors and could supply new opportunities for imaging and eradication of different types of cancer. These findings are of interest to the broad audience in chemical biology, bioanalytical chemistry, cancer biology and medicine.
