Nucleic Acid Aptamers as an Alternative to Antibodies in Diagnostic and Therapeutics

Dr. Gregory Penner, NeoVentures Biotechnology Inc., London, Canada, gpenner@neoventures.ca

The concept that single stranded oligonucleotides (aptamers) had the capacity to mimic antibodies by binding to target molecules was discovered 30 years ago. Since then the science of aptamer identification has continued to grow but commercial applications have been disappointingly scarce. There are many reasons for this lack of commercial success to date. Some of these reasons are intrinsic to aptamers, there are things that antibodies implicitly do better than aptamers are capable of. A lot of the reasons for the lack of commercial success however are due to poor aptamer identification strategies, and a lack of imagination in terms of the chemistry required to maintain activity when immobilized, or to consider approaches for detection.

In this lecture, Dr. Penner will draw from his experience in working with aptamers at NeoVentures for the past 17 years, including the first successful commercialization of diagnostic aptamers. He will provide an update on their use of advanced mathematical models to guide and optimize aptamer selection, discuss how best to use next generation sequence analysis to identify candidate aptamers, and elaborate on strategies for the selection of aptamers that neutralize cellular receptors. In addition, he will provide an overview of effective chemical approaches to aptamer immobilization while retaining activity, use of gold nanoparticles functionalized with aptamers, and the effective use of specific antisense oligos in lateral flow detection. He will also provide insights into the novel use of aptamers themselves as biomarkers, with the aptamarker platform that his company in Paris, (NeoNeuro) has pioneered.

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Abstract Reference & Short Personal Biography of Presenting Author

Dr. Gregory Penner is the President & CEO of NeoVentures Biotechnology Inc. (London, Canada) a global leader in the development of aptamers on a fee-for-service basis, and President & Founder of NeoNeuro SAS (Paris, France), where he has led the invention of the aptamarker platform for prediction of Aβ brain lesion deposition from blood analysis, and more recently cancer treatment outcomes from biopsy tissue. Dr. Penner was trained in crop genetics, and led the wheat genomics effort globally for Monsanto before turning his attention to aptamers and health care. Dr. Penner was a pioneer in development of molecular breeding, enabling decisions made in crop selection based on genotypic markers and statistical models without the need to know the biological basis for such selections. He is now bringing this agnostic approach to diagnosis to health care. Let’s diagnose disease with greater accuracy, so that we can provide more effective treatments.