Dabigatran Etexilate is a new oral anticoagulant increasingly used for number of blood thrombosis conditions, prevention of strokes and systemic emboli among patients with atrial fibrillation. It provides safe and adequate anticoagulation for prevention and treatment of thrombus in several clinical settings. However, anticoagulation therapy can be associated with an increased risk of bleeding. There is a lack of specific laboratory tests to determine the level of this drug in blood. This is considered the most important obstacles of using this medication, particularly for patients with trauma, drug toxicity, in urgent need for surgical interventions or uncontrolled bleeding.The goal of this research project is to obtain and characterize DNA aptamers for Dabigatran Etexilate and to evaluate potential applications of these aptamers to develop low cost, sensitive, selective and user-friendly biosensors. In this work, we performed Systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX) to select specific DNA aptamers against dabigatran etexilate. Following multiple rounds of selection and enrichment with a randomized 60-mer DNA library, specific DNA aptamers for dabigatran were selected. We investigated the affinity and specificity of generated aptamers to the drug showing dissociation constants (Kd) ranging from 46.8- 208 nM. A preliminary application of one of the selected aptamers in an electrochemical nano-biosensor was successfully performed and showed high sensitivity and selectivity. This work represents novel work and clinically available. With further improvement of the assay and optimization, these aptamers are useful in developing Dabigatran Etexilate detection and analytical applications and with unique potentials of clinical uses in the near future.

Disclosures

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Author notes

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Asterisk with author names denotes non-ASH members.

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