Abstract

EVs Add New Dimensions to Cancer Clinic

Xandra Breakefield, Professor, Harvard Medical School

Critical issues in cancer treatment are early detection, personalized data on gene drivers, and new therapies. In the case of both brain tumors, which are not easily accessible, and peripheral tumors, which may metastasize all over the body, we need to obtain clinically critical information from collective biofluids.  Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have become a clinically relevant resource of biomarker information by providing a means to sensitively detect mutant proteins, DNA and RNA in biofluids, including blood, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) and urine samples.  Assays and devices to glean this information are emerging as products for clinical analyses. Waiting in the wings, and about to erupt, is the potential to use EVs as therapeutic delivery vehicles which can be derived from the patients’ own cells and target tumors throughout the body.