Intramers and Aptamers: Applications in Protein‐Function Analyses and Potential for Drug Screening

On target. Aptamers and intramers can be isolated against diverse targets and are used as functional inhibitors to characterise proteins in vitro or in living organisms. As nucleic acids, they are predestined for the functional validation of intracellular proteins or protein subdomains. Recent developments have boosted aptamer technology for applications such as small-molecule screening (see scheme); this underlines the fact that aptamers provide an exciting novel interface between target validation and drug development.