Fluoresent Signaling Aptamers for Rodent B&T Cell Analysis

"OmniSite BioDiagnostics proposes to demonstrate and develop artificial receptors composed of DNA called "aptamers" to replace anti-B and T lymphocyte and cytokine antibodies for rabbit and guinea pig immunologic analyses. DNA aptamers will be generated bythe Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment (SELEX) combinatorial chemistry technique. The anti-rodent B and T cell DNA aptamers will be engineered with intrachain fluorochrome and quencher pairs that will cause a change in fluorescenceintensity upon binding to target lymphocyte subpopulations or cytokines. Hence, such aptamers will be useful in fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometric, and spectrofluorometric analyses. SELEX aptamers offer several major advantages over antibodytechnology; most notably obviating the use of animal hosts and taking advantage of tremendous sequence diversity to select very high affinity specific binding DNA molecules developed against any target molecule. SELEX DNA aptamers can be rapidly andinexpensively mass produced with relative ease compared to antibody production and purification.In Phase I, OmniSite proposes to develop a set of specific DNA aptamers to characterize rabbit and guinea pig memory B and T cells as well as key cytokines. In Phase II, the anti-cellular and anti-cytokine aptamers will be cloned and sequenced and theirfluorescence properties will be optimized for use in flow cytometry. There is a worldwide need for