Oligonucleotide Biopolymers - Future Challenges for Chromatography

Synthetic Oligonucleotides as Therapeutic Medicines

Synthetic oligonucleotides are an exciting new class of biomolecules capable of treating many disorders, which are currently not amenable to existing drugs, including viral infections [1], respiratory disorders [2], cancers [3] and rare diseases [4]. Current interest has been largely fuelled by two key events: firstly, Fire and Mello’s Nobel-prize winning discovery of gene silencing by RNA interference (which helped to improve our understanding of the genetic basis of many diseases) [5]; and secondly, the regulatory approval of two oligonucleotide-based drugs, namely Vitravene® [6] (a 21-base single stranded antisense oligonucleotide approved by the FDA in 1998 for cytomegalovirus infections) and Macugen® [7] (a pegylated aptamer approved in 2005 for treating wet macular degeneration).