2010 Volume 25 Issue 6 Pages 573-578
Living organisms on the Earth use nucleic acids, which hybridize to complementary sequences to form double-stranded structures, to transfer genetic information to the next generations. This property of double-strand formation has been applied to construct a variety of DNA-based structures to open a novel research field of DNA nanotechnology. Our laboratory has shown that the immunostimulatory activity of oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) containing CpG motifs, a well-known immunostimulator, can be greatly increased by building it up into Y-shaped DNA or dendrimer-like DNA.
This article reviews the recent findings on these ODN-based nano-sized systems, which could find application to in vivo delivery of a variety of pharmaceutical compounds.
