Molecular Foundation of Cancer: A Chemical Biology Approach
Weihong Tan

Distinguished Professor
College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and College of Biology
Hunan University
Changsha, Hunan, China

To produce a full understanding of the molecular basis of diseases, we will need to have novel molecular probes to recognize targets of interest. Currently, molecular medicine lacks effective probes for understanding and treating human diseases. Of the many potential molecular probes, a new class of designer nucleic acids (called aptamers) holds great potential. Aptamers can be selected for single proteins and even small molecules. Recently, we have applied a novel cell-based aptamer selection strategy (Cell-SELEX) to generate multiple aptamers for the specific recognition of biological cells without prior knowledge of the biomarkers for the cells. Cell-SELEX is a process for aptamer selection using whole intact cells as target for the creation of molecular probes binding specifically to the target cells. The selection process is simple, fast, and reproducible. The selected aptamers have dissociation constants in the nanomolar to picomolar range. So far, we have selected molecular probes for ten different cancers and used these aptamers in making molecular tools for cancer studies. The newly selected aptamers, combined with both magnetic and luminescent nanomaterials, can be used for ultrasensitive detection of tumors, for molecular profiling of individual cancer patients, for targeted drug delivery, and, most importantly, for cancer biomarker discovery. We will report our most recent progress in this exciting research area especially in molecular targeting of cancer cells using aptamer conjugated nanomaterials.