Application of Microfluidic Chips in Separation and Analysis of Extracellular Vesicles in Liquid Biopsy for Cancer

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are becoming a promising biomarker in liquid biopsy of cancer. Separation EV from cell culture medium or biofluids with high purity and quality remains a technique challenge. EV manipulation techniques based on microfluidics have been developed in the last decade. Microfluidic-based EV separation techniques developed so far can be classified into two categories: surface biomarker-dependent and size-dependent approaches. Microfluidic techniques allow the integration of EV separation and analysis on a single chip. Integrated EV separation and on-chip analysis have shown great potential in cancer diagnosis and monitoring treatment of responses. In this review, we discuss the development of microfluidic chips for EV separation and analysis. We also detail the clinical application of these microfluidic chips in the liquid biopsy of various cancers.

The Emerging Roles of Extracellular Vesicles in Osteosarcoma

“…In this respect the International Society of Extracellular Vesicles supported several initiatives to favor method homogenization, such as the EV Transparent Reporting and Centralizing Knowledge (76), the Minimal Information for Studies of EVs (4) and the Clinical Wrap-Up session at ISEV2018 (77). As far as EVs isolation methods are concerned, microfluidic miniaturized systems have recently emerged as promising technology to address both isolation and analysis of EVs in clinical settings, where a small amount of samples are available and rare molecular targets have to be detected (78, 79).…”

Evolution of Biochip Technology: A Review from Lab-on-a-Chip to Organ-on-a-Chip

“…Various exciting directions are expected for the future of LOC highly integrated devices for diagnostic and therapeutic are some of the interesting applications of LOC devices. For instance, rapid detection of viral infections [152,153] and early detection of cancer biomarkers [154,155] directly from body fluids are some of the highly attractive subjects in this area.…”

Extracellular Vesicles in Liquid Biopsies: Potential for Disease Diagnosis

“…Immunoaffinity-based microfluidics separates EVs through the interaction of surface or intravesicular EV biomarkers with antibodies immobilized onto the microchannel surface or magnetic beads. Dynamic exosome microfluidics utilizes an electrical or acoustic field to separate EVs from other nanoparticles [ 109 ]. By changing field magnitude and frequency, this technique can separate EV subtypes without the need for complicated photolithography fabrication.…”