SELEX Technology Platforms

After more than ten years of development, Creative Biolabs has established an extensive platform to develop new aptamers. These cutting-edge technologies allow our scientists to address different aspects of your needs and tailor the most appropriate solutions to help make your project a success.

What Is Aptamer?

What Is Aptamer?Nucleic acid aptamer is a small in vitro screened oligonucleotide sequence or short polypeptide that can bind with high affinity and strong specificity to the corresponding ligand, and it has emerged to provide a new platform for efficient and rapid identification research in the chemical biology and biomedical communities, and has shown promising applications in many aspects.

Advantages of Aptamers

  • A Short Screening Cycle
  • Less Working Concentration, Low Batch Variability
  • Simple Amplification Process
  • Stable at Room Temperature and Easy to Store and Transport

SELEX Technology

The SELEX technology, Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment, allows the screening of nucleic acid aptamers from a library of random single-stranded nucleic acid sequences with high affinity to the target material. After more than a decade of development, SELEX technology has become an important research tool and instrument.

Process of SELEX Technology

Process of SELEX Technology

The general idea of SELEX technology is to obtain target nucleic acid aptamers from a random oligonucleotide library (about 1015 to 1018 nucleic acid molecules) through multiple rounds of screening and exponential enrichment. As a nucleic acid aptamer screening technology, the SELEX process starts with a random oligonucleotide library (RNA or DNA) synthesized by combinatorial chemistry.

Schematic illustration of the SELEX process for the DNA and RNA library.Fig 1. Schematic illustration of the SELEX process for the DNA and RNA library [1].

Since the introduction of SELEX technology, the technology itself has developed very rapidly, and the establishment of improved SELEX technologies such as blended SELEX, complex targets SELEX, and genomic SELEX has made the application of SELEX technology more promising. Oligonucleotide ligands as diagnostic reagents, alone or in combination with antibodies, have shown their unique advantages, especially to make up for the lack of antibodies in the diagnostic field. It is believed that in the near future, oligonucleotide ligand arrays will become one of the major tools in proteomic research, which will not only greatly facilitate the diagnosis of diseases, but also help to discover new therapeutic approaches.

Development of SELEX Technology

In the actual screening of nucleic acid aptamers, SELEX is often limited by the screening environment and the technology itself, which affects the screening effect and screening efficiency. In recent years, researchers have developed many novel SELEX technologies suitable for different purposes based on traditional SELEX, which have greatly promoted the application and development of aptamer technology in various fields.

CE-SELEX Capillary electrophoresis provides rapid and efficient isolation of target molecule-nucleic acid aptamer complexes from unbound DNA libraries, thereby increasing screening efficiency.
AFM SELEX Atomic force microscopy (AFM) allows dynamic detection of the adhesion or affinity between the sample surface and the cantilever. This feature can be used to select aptamers that bind to their targets with very high affinity.
Capture-SELEX Capture-SELEX program can select DNA aptamers using solutes as targets by constructing a special SELEX library that immobilizes oligonucleotide libraries on magnetic beads or other surfaces for screening purposes.
In-silico SELEX In-silico SELEX is a new computer-based, non-experimental method for screening and optimizing aptamers that provides computational solutions for 3 key processes of aptamer screening.
Photo-SELEX This method utilizes a stronger covalent bond than affinity for screening, and therefore the aptamers obtained will also be more selective. This method can be further applied to study the interaction of nucleic acid aptamers with target proteins.
Microfluidic-SELEX This method is the first to propose the application of microfluidic control technology for the screening of nucleic acid aptamers, which not only achieves the goal of efficient, fast and automated screening and automated screening, but also has important implications for the development of miniaturized and integrated screening This method is the first to propose the application of microfluidic technology to nucleic acid aptamer screening.
Mag-SELEX The advantages of Mag-SELEX include a spherical display surface for full display of the target and the ease of magnetic separation, giving this method a wide range of applications.
Microarray SELEX Microarray SELEX platforms are used to study gene expression and protein-nucleic acid interactions, and are therefore also used in SELEX screening, which has the advantage of allowing multiple screens to be performed simultaneously, greatly improving screening efficiency.

Advantages of SELEX

Advantages of SELEX

Applications of SELEX

After more than a decade of development since its first application in 1990, SELEX technology has become an important research tool and instrument, and has many optimized technology platforms.

Nucleic acid aptamer-based biomedical diagnostics

  • Detection of Various Small Molecules and Ions
  • Biomolecule Detection
  • Identification and Analysis of Tumor Cells
  • Identification of Cancer Markers

Nucleic acid aptamer-based targeted therapies

Nucleic acid aptamers based on cell-SELEX screening have better chemical properties than antibodies, can bind specifically to proteins and reversibly affect protein function without causing immunogenic reactions in vivo, have good permeability, and are expected to be new targeted therapeutic tools.

Our Services

Creative Biolabs specializes in aptamer discovery and development and has extensive experience in screening aptamers using our integrated platform. Our experienced scientists are happy to meet each of our customers' most specific requirements, develop natural aptamers using our leading SELEX aptamer screening technology, and provide the most appropriate solutions for our customers.

Reference

  1. Komarova N, et al. Inside the Black Box: What Makes SELEX Better? Molecules. 2019;24(19):3598.
For research use only. Not intended for any clinical use.
Copyright © Creative Biolabs. All Rights Reserved.
ISO 9001 Certified - Creative Biolabs Quality Management System.
Top