Aptamers as biomarkers for neurological disorders. Proof of concept in transgenic mice

PLoS One. 2018 Jan 5;13(1):e0190212. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190212. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

The act of selecting aptamers against blood serum leads to deep libraries of oligonucleotide sequences that bind to a range of epitopes in blood. In this study we developed an enriched aptamer library by performing positive selection against a pool of blood serum samples from transgenic mice (P301S) carrying the human tau gene and counter selecting against pooled blood serum from negative segregant (wild type) mice. We demonstrated that a large proportion of the aptamer sequences observed with next generation sequence (NGS) analysis were the same from selection round 5 and selection round 6. As a second step, we applied aliquots of the selection round 5 enriched library to blood serum from 16 individual mice for a single round of selection. Each of these individual libraries were characterized through NGS analysis and the changes in relative frequency in aptamers from transgenic mice versus wild type were used to construct a diagnostic fingerprint of the effect of the action of the transgene on the composition of blood serum. This study serves as a model for similar applications with human subjects.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Aptamers, Nucleotide / metabolism*
  • Biomarkers / metabolism*
  • Humans
  • Mice
  • Mice, Transgenic
  • Nervous System Diseases / metabolism*
  • SELEX Aptamer Technique

Substances

  • Aptamers, Nucleotide
  • Biomarkers

Grants and funding

This work was made possible by a grant from the Banque publique d'investissement (BPI, France) (http://www.bpifrance.fr/) (3697847/1) to NeoNeuro. The funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries [SL, KS] and research materials. SL and KS are employees of NeoNeuro SAS. Dr.Gregory Penner is the President and Founder of NeoNeuro SAS.