What are protective effects of anti-ricin A-chain aptamer?
A research article to be published on November 7, 2008 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team was led by Dr. Kam-Meng Tchou-Wong from New York University School of Medicine in United States. Authors investigated the therapeutic potential of an RNA ligand (aptamer) specific for the catalytic ricin A-chain (RTA), the protective effects of a 31-nucleotide RNA aptamer (31RA), which formed a high affinity complex with RTA, against ricin-induced toxicity in cell-based luciferase translation and cell cytotoxicity assays were evaluated. They have shown that 31RA RNA aptamer can protect against ricin ribotoxicity in cell-based luciferase and cell cytotoxicity assays. Hence, RNA aptamer that inhibits RTA enzymatic activity represents a novel class of nucleic acid inhibitor that has the potential to be developed as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of ricin intoxication. In this report, authors utilized a stable cell-based luciferase assay and show
