Identification of Vigilin as a potential ischemia biomarker by Brain Slice-based SELEX

Cerebral stroke is the leading cause of disability and death among adults worldwide, and results in numerous biochemical alterations. However, few efficient biomarkers are clinically available to diagnose cerebral stroke because of the limitations of biomarkers and their probes. In this work, we utilized frozen brain slices of middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in a mouse model of ischemia to select a specific binding aptamer, termed LCW17, by tissue-based SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment). LCW17 was significantly enriched in ischemic brain slices compared to sham control. We identified the binding target of LCW17 as Vigilin. Vigilin is in-creased in ischemia brain slices in vivo and exhibits enhanced release from cultured hippocampal neurons after oxygen glucose deprivation in vitro. Taken together, ischemic brain slice-based aptamer se-lection will enable identification of more probes and potential target molecules for diagnosis and therapy of ischemic stroke. Aptame...