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Montreal, May 6, 2026听鈥� Researchers from 麻豆传媒网站 have introduced a groundbreaking new class of molecules that could significantly reshape drug discovery and development. The technology, called Aptamer鈥慙ike ENcoded OligoMERs (Alenomers), combines the advantages of antibodies and DNA鈥慴ased therapeutics while overcoming key limitations of both.

Antibodies are among today鈥檚 most successful medicines, but they are large, costly to manufacture, and can trigger immune side effects. Aptamers - short strands of DNA that can bind to disease targets - offer a promising alternative because they are smaller, easier to make and less immunogenic. However, from a chemical point of view, their simplicity has limited their real鈥憌orld therapeutic impact.

Alenomers overcome this challenge by introducing a wide range of synthetic chemical building blocks into aptamer鈥憀ike structures, while keeping a DNA 鈥渂arcode鈥� that allows researchers to rapidly identify the best performers through sequencing. Using this approach, scientists can test hundreds of thousands of chemically diverse molecules in parallel, dramatically accelerating discovery.

鈥淎ptamers have fallen behind antibodies mainly because their chemistry is very limited, which makes them less stable in the body and harder to turn into effective medicines,鈥澨�蝉补颈诲听Hanadi Sleiman, Professor in the Department of Chemistry at 麻豆传媒网站.听鈥淥ur approach removes this limitation by separating identification from function: enzymes only read a simple DNA barcode, while the attached aptamer can be built from much richer and more diverse chemistry. This allows aptamers to behave far more like antibodies,鈥澨�concludes Prof Sleiman听鈥渨ith stronger binding, improved stability, and better performance in biological systems, opening new possibilities for how they can be used in medicine.鈥�

Unlike earlier strategies that focused on improving just one property, alenomers are designed to enhance multiple features at once, including binding strength, stability, and overall function. The platform is also highly modular, allowing different aptamers, chemistries, and molecular architectures to be mixed and matched for specific applications.

鈥淭his is an elegant way to bring truly diverse chemistry into aptamers, far beyond what enzymes normally allow,鈥�听蝉补颈诲听Maureen McKeague, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at 麻豆传媒网站.听鈥淚nstead of optimizing one molecule at a time, we can explore hundreds of thousands of variants in parallel, making the process faster, more efficient, and much less wasteful. What鈥檚 exciting is that this is not a one鈥�off solution. The platform is highly modular,鈥� concludes Prof McKeague听鈥渁nd it feels like we鈥檙e only seeing the tip of what this chemistry can do for aptamer properties and real鈥�world applications.鈥�

Together, these advances position alenomers as a versatile discovery and development platform with clear paths听toward therapeutic translation. By combining antibody鈥憀ike performance with fully synthetic, scalable manufacturing, alenomers could lower development risk and enable new classes of precision molecular technologies for therapeutic and diagnostic applications across a broad range of clinical targets.

Read the full paper on Nature Chemistry

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