Our previous work has shown that the nucleolin aptamer possesses the properties necessary for in vitro delivery of oligonucleotide therapeutics to the nuclei of cancer cells [25], and the work herein demonstrates for the first time that nucleolin aptamer chimeras can directly deliver aptamer-based therapeutics without a viral or liposomal vector to intracellular targets in order to generate a therapeutically relevant effect in leukemic cells. Here, NUCLEOLIN is linked to cancer.