Current therapy for ovarian cancer typically involves indiscriminate chemotherapies that can have severe off target effects on healthy tissue and are still plagued by aggressive recurrence. Recent shifts towards targeted therapies offer the possibility of circumventing the obstacles experienced by these traditional treatments. While antibodies are the pioneering agents in targeted therapies, clinical experience has demonstrated that their antitumor efficacy is limited due to their high immunogenicity, large molecular size, and costly and laborious production. In contrast, nucleic acid based chemical antibodies, also known as aptamers, are ideal for this application given their small size, lack of immunogenicity and in vitro production. As aptamers have begun to demonstrate their promise through targeting Epithelial Cell Adhesion Molecule (EpCAM), as well as a number of ovarian cancer biomarkers, in in vivo and in vitro models, their clinical applicability is slowly being realised. This review explores some of the current progress of aptamers targeting cancer biomarkers and their potential role as ovarian cancer therapeutics.

当前的卵巢癌治疗通常涉及不加选择的化学疗法，其可能对健康组织产生严重的脱靶效应，并且仍然受到侵袭性复发的困扰。最近向靶向疗法的转变提供了规避这些传统疗法所遇到的障碍的可能性。尽管抗体是靶向疗法的先驱者，但临床经验表明，由于其高免疫原性，大分子大小以及昂贵且费力的生产，其抗肿瘤功效受到限制。相比之下，基于核酸的化学抗体（也称为适体）因其体积小，缺乏免疫原性和体外功能而非常适合该应用生产。由于在体内和体外模型中，适体已经开始通过靶向上皮细胞粘附分子（EpCAM）以及多种卵巢癌生物标记物来证明其前景，因此它们的临床适用性正在逐步实现。这篇综述探讨了针对癌症生物标志物的适体的一些最新进展及其作为卵巢癌治疗剂的潜在作用。