Harnessing Tiny Cell-derived Vesicles

Abstract

Nano-sized extracellular vesicles (EVs) naturally secreted from cells—have emerged as promising biomarkers and potential therapeutic vehicles, but methods to manipulate them for engineering purposes remain elusive. Among the technical obstacles are the small size and surface complexity of them and the complex processing steps required, which reduce the biocompatibility of currently available methods. Here, we demonstrate our on-going research using “Lab-on-a-disc”, which applies centrifugal force to process biological fluid such as whole blood or urine to analyze cancer related biomarkers. To improve stability and to provide surface functionality, we encapsulated the EVs with a nanofilm of natural polyphenol, which could protect EVs from external aggressors such as UV-C irradiation or heat and is controllably degraded on demand. Furthermore, gold nanoparticles can be covalently attached for single-exosome level visualization. Next we introduce the microfluidic chip equipped with biologically interfaced platelet membrane-cloaked surface (PLT-Chip), which could specifically capture EVs from multiple types of cancer cell lines (prostate, lung, bladder, and breast) than the normal cell-derived EVs and clearly distinguish the plasma of cancer patients from that of normal healthy controls.