Extracellular vesicles from plasma, other body fluids and cell culture media hold great promise in the search for biomarkers. Exosomes in particular, the vesicle type that is secreted after being produced in the endocytic pathway and having a diameter of 30–150 nm, are considered to be a conveyance for signaling molecules and, therefore, to hold valuable information regarding the health and activity status of the cells from which they are released. The vesicular nature of exosomes is central to all methods used to separate them from the highly abundant proteins in plasma and other fluids. The enrichment of the vesicles is essential for mass spectrometry‐based analysis as they represent only a very small component of all plasma proteins. The progression of isolation techniques for exosomes from ultracentrifugation through chromatographic separation using hydrophobic packing materials shows that effective enrichment is possible and that high throughput approaches to exosome enrichment are achievable.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.