Overview

Raptamer Discovery Group, LLC is dedicated to the development and commercialization of aptamer technology and its products. Specifically, we develop synthetic affinity reagents called Raptamers for applications in life science research, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Raptamers provide the performance of monoclonal antibodies but avoid many of the problems associated with them. A Raptamer is an affinity agent (similar in function to an antibody) that is comprised of a single strand of DNA with non-DNA chemical modifications attached to one or more of the DNA bases. A Raptamer has much greater chemical diversity than a natural aptamer. Raptamers use combinations of chemically-modified DNA bases and backbones that typically cannot be amplified using PCR. This makes it impossible to generate Raptamers using the typical enzymatic processes used to select aptamers (e.g., SELEX). The diversity of the chemical functional groups in Raptamers provides much better interaction with a target, which typically results in better binding affinity and specificity.