Abstract

An Integrated Microfluidic Device for Selective Isolation and Detection of Cancer-specific Exosomes

Hyo-Il Jung, Professor, Yonsei University

Intercellular communications can be accomplished by means of extracellular vesicles (EVs) responsible for transferring biological cargo such as lipids, proteins, functional messenger RNAs, microRNAs, and double-stranded DNA. One of the EVs, exosome, is the size of 30-150 nm membrane vesicles released from both normal and cancer cells. Therefore the isolation and detection of exosomes are of great importance in the liquid biopsy-based cancer diagnosis and monitoring of treatment response as the functionality of the exosomes reflects the cancer progression and metastasis. There have been a myriad of researches on the microfluidic devices for the probing tool and some of them demonstrated a breakthrough to replace the time-consuming and tedious steps of ultracentrifugation in purifying exosomes. Here I will describe the microfluidic devices for the isolation and detection of cancer-specific exosomes and then discuss the critical concerns and future directions in the field of exosome work.