Congratulations to Xilan Li, Weiyun Zhang, Lu Liu, ZhiZhu, Yuan An, and Chunyi Zhao!

Abastract:

Cancer is a major public health issue, with metastatic cancer accounting for the overwhelming majority of cancer deaths. Earlier diagnosis and appropriate treatment of metastaticcancer may largely prolong the survival rate and improve the quality of life for patients. In this study we have identified a panel of DNA aptamersspecifically binding to MDA-MB-231 cells derived from metastatic site-pleural effusion, with high affinity after 15 rounds of selections using the cell-SELEX method.The selected aptamers were subjected to flow cytometry and laser confocal fluorescence microscope to evaluate their binding affinity and selectivity. TheaptamerLXL-1 with highest abundance in the enriched library demonstrated a low K_d valueand excellent selectivity for therecognition of the metastatic breast cancer cells. Tissue imaging results showed thataptamertruncated sequence LXL-1-Awas highly specific to the corresponding tumor tissue and displayed 76% detection rate against breast cancer tissue with metastasis inregional lymph nodes. Therefore, based on its excellent targeting properties and functional versatility,LXL-1-Aholds great potential to be used as amolecular imaging probeforthe detectionof breast cancer metastasis. Our result clearly demonstrates that metastatic-cell-based SELEX can be used to generate DNA ligands specifically recognizing metastatic cancer cells, which is of great significance for metastatic cancer diagnosis and treatment.