The potential of tumor-derived exosomes for noninvasive cancer monitoring: an update

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Liquid biopsy platforms are being actively developed in the biomarker field. Extracellular vesicles (EVs), especially the tumor-derived exosome (TEX) subsets of EVs, represent a platform that allows for molecular and genetic profiling of parent tumor cells. TEX are ubiquitous in body fluids of cancer patients and are promising clinically relevant surrogates of cancer cells.

Areas covered: Isolation from body fluids of cancer patients and subsetting of exosomes based on immunoaffinity capture offers a means of evaluating proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and other molecular contents that are a characteristic of TEX and exosomes produced by reprogrammed normal cells. The same liquid biopsy can inform about the status of a tumor and simultaneously evaluate the competency of immune cells to mediate anti-tumor activities.

Expert commentary: TEX and reprogrammed non-TEX isolated from plasma of cancer patients have the potential to become non-invasive biomarkers of cancer diagnosis, prognosis and response to therapies.

KEYWORDS:

• Extracellular vesicles
• tumor-derived exosomes
• cancer
• non-invasive biomarkers

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewers disclosure

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial relationships or otherwise to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The author acknowledges partial support from NIH grants RO-1 CA168628 and R-21 CA205644.