Abstract

Subgroups of Extracellular Vesicles from Tumor Tissues for Biomarker Discovery and Liquid Biopsy Development in Malignant Disease

Jan Lötvall, Professor Krefting Research Centre, University of Gothenburg, Chief Scientist, Codiak BioSciences

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have the capacity to shuttle both proteins, lipids and nucleotides such as RNA between cells, leading to an array of functional changes in a recipient cell. Importantly, the EV secretome changes significantly in disease, especially in cancer. We have recently developed a process to isolate EVs specifically from tumor tissues, and have utilized this technology to identify an array of biomarker candidates in malignant melanoma, breast cancer and colon cancer. Specifically, the technique identifies EV surface molecules from tumor tissue EVs, which are not present on plasma EVs from healthy individuals. Using this information, we have been able to develop assays to specifically identify cancer-EVs in the circulation in cancer patients compared to healthy individuals. This presentation will discuss EV diversity, and will give several examples of circulating cancer EV biomarkers that can function as liquid biopsies in cancer subgroup identification, cancer monitoring and putatively cancer screening.