Enhanced in Vivo Blood-Brain Barrier Penetration by Circular Tau-Transferrin Receptor Bifunctional Aptamer for Tauopathy Therapy

J Am Chem Soc. 2020 Feb 26;142(8):3862-3872. doi: 10.1021/jacs.9b11490. Epub 2020 Feb 11.

Abstract

The lack of blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetrating ability has hindered the delivery of many therapeutic agents for tauopathy treatment. In this study, we report the synthesis of a circular bifunctional aptamer to enhance the in vivo BBB penetration for better tauopathy therapy. The circular aptamer consists of one reported transferrin receptor (TfR) aptamer to facilitate TfR-aptamer recognition-induced transcytosis across BBB endothelial cells, and one Tau protein aptamer that we recently selected to inhibit Tau phosphorylation and other tauopathy-related pathological events in the brain. This novel circular Tau-TfR bifunctional aptamer displays significantly improved plasma stability and brain exposure, as well as the ability to disrupt tauopathy and improve traumatic brain injury (TBI)-induced cognitive/memory deficits in vivo, providing important proof-of-principle evidence that circular Tau-TfR aptamer can be further developed into diagnostic and therapeutic candidates for tauopathies.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Aptamers, Peptide / metabolism*
  • Blood-Brain Barrier*
  • Humans
  • Mice
  • Proof of Concept Study
  • Receptors, Transferrin / metabolism*
  • Tauopathies / therapy*
  • Transferrin / metabolism*
  • tau Proteins / metabolism*

Substances

  • Aptamers, Peptide
  • Receptors, Transferrin
  • Transferrin
  • tau Proteins