Exosomes: Key tools for cancer liquid biopsy

[摘要] Precision medicine is based on the identification of biomarkers of tumor development and progression. Liquidbiopsy is at the forefront of the ability to gather diagnostic and prognostic information on tumors, as it can benoninvasively performed prior or during treatment. Liquid biopsy mostly utilizes circulating tumor cells, or free DNA,but also exosomes. The latter are nanovesicles secreted by most cell types, found in any body fluid that deliverproteins, nucleic acids and lipids to nearby and distant cells with a unique homing ability. Exosomes function insignalling between the tumor microenvironment and the rest of the body, promoting metastasis, immune remodellingand drug resistance. Exosomes are emerging as a key tool in precision medicine for cancer liquid biopsy, as theyefficiently preserve their biomarker cargo. Moreover, exosomes strongly resemble the parental cell, which can help inassessing the oxidative and metabolic state of the donor cell. In this respect, exosomes represent one of the mostpromising new tools to fight cancer. This review will discuss the clinical applications of profiling exosomal proteinsand lipids by high-throughput proteomics and metabolomics, and nucleic acids by next generation sequencing, as wellas how this may allow cancer diagnosis, therapy response monitoring and recurrence detection.

[学科分类] 仪器

[关键词] Cancer;Exosome;Liquid biopsy;Precision medicine