Clinical implications of carcinoembryonic antigen distribution in serum exosomal fraction—Measurement by ELISA

摘要

BackgroundSerum exosomal proteins have great potential as indicators of disease status in cancer, inflammatory or metabolic diseases. The association of a fraction of various serum proteins such as carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) with circulating exosomes has been debated. The establishment of a method to measure the exosomal fraction of such proteins might help resolve this controversy. The use of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) to measure serum exosomal molecules, for example CEA, is rare in research laboratories and totally absent in clinical biology. In this study, we optimized a method for assessment of serum exosomal molecules combining a treatment by volume-excluding polymers to isolate the exosomes, their subsequent solubilization in an assay buffer and ELISA.