Editorial: Nucleic acid-based aptamers in therapeutics and diagnostics

Aptamers have emerged as versatile and powerful tools in the fields of therapeutics and diagnostics. These molecules are single-stranded nucleic acids—either DNA or RNA—that fold into unique three-dimensional structures, allowing them to selectively bind to target molecules with high affinity and specificity. They can be identified through an iterative selection process called SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment).The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.Peer reviewe