Cell-derived extracellular vesicles as a platform to identify low-invasive disease biomarkers

Abstract

Biomarkers are of great importance for prediction, diagnosis and monitoring the progression and therapeutic success of a disease. Whole body fluids, such as blood or urine, constitute the main desired biological source to identify these markers, mostly due to the minimally invasive procedures used to collect them. An additional benefit of studying these biological fluids that has been demonstrated by many different groups is that they contain cell-released extracellular vesicles, carrying a cargo of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids that reflects cell/tissue origin and, remarkably, cellular status. In this review, the information obtained from the characterization of this body fluid compartment in human samples is discussed in the context of its usefulness as diagnostic resource for several pathologies, including cancer, inflammatory, vascular and metabolic diseases. The review shows the great variety of methods used for this purpose as well as the different types of molecules that could serve as specific or common disease markers.

Keywords:

• biomarker
• body fluids
• circulating vesicles
• diagnosis
• exosomes
• extracellular vesicles
• human samples
• microparticles
• microvesicles

Financial & competing interests disclosure

JM Falcón-Pérez is supported by grants PS09/00526 & PI12-01604 from Spanish Ministry MICINN integrated in the National plan I+D+I and co-funded by the ISCIII-Subdirección General de Evaluación and the European Fund for Regional Development (Feder); JM Falcón-Pérez is also supported by Foundation Movember (GAP1) and GV PI2012-45 by Basque Government. Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en el Área temática de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBERehd) is funded by the Spanish ISCIII-MICINN. 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.

Key issues

• Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are released by every cell in the body.

• Their composition reflects the changes taking place in their corresponding cell of origin. This fact makes them excellent candidates to search new biomarkers.

• Body fluids recover and deliver these EVs to specific tissues. Thus, body fluids carry a representative compendium of EVs from different origins, acting as a suitable source for biomarkers.

• Putative biomarkers associated with EVs include proteins and nucleic acid, especially mRNAs and miRs.

• Some possible biomarkers are specific and others prove to be more general.