Exosomes and circulating biomarkers 2013 - Select biosciences' summit

摘要

Exosomes/microvesicles (EMVs) offer significant promise for the development of liquid biopsies for a number of disease classes, most notably cancer. The current challenges in the isolation and purification of EMVs are slowly being addressed by new technologies aimed at the research marketplace, as well as the downstream diagnostics market. Once isolated and purified, the challenge for the study of these vesicles moves towards interrogation of the cargo (e.g., RNA) and proteins contained therein. There is the need to "associate" specific molecular signatures with specific clinical sequelae. This is perhaps the most intractable problem and will require significant investment of resources and time to establish these relationships. Additionally, circulating tumor cells represent yet another class of circulating biomarkers, and it is believed that different types of circulating biomarkers will be deployed in liquid biopsies for different disease classes. Over the coming decade the marketplace will be segmented by disease classes first and technologies/ biomarker classes second. However, the inescapable conclusion is that the era of minimally invasive biopsies is coming closer, and will provide less painful procedures, better manage ment and cost-effective diagnostics.