Current Search through Liquid Biopsy of Effective Biomarkers for Early Cancer Diagnosis into the Rich Cargoes of Extracellular Vesicles

Abstract

There exist many different human cancers, but regardless of the cancer type, an early diagnosis is a necessary condition for further optimal outcomes from the disease. Therefore, efficient specific and sensitive cancer biomarkers are urgently needed. This is especially true for the cancers depicting a silent progression, and those only diagnosed in an already metastatic state with a poor survival prognostic. After a rapid overview of the previous methods for cancer diagnosis, the outstanding characteristics of extracellular vesicles (EVs) will be presented, as new interesting candidates for early cancer diagnosis in human biofluid non-invasive liquid biopsy. The present review aims to give the state-of-the-art of the numerous searches of efficient EV-mediated cancer diagnosis. The corresponding literature quest was performed by means of an original approach, using a powerful Expernova Questel big data platform, which was specifically adapted for a literature search on EVs. The chosen collected scientific papers are presented in two parts, the first one drawing up a picture of the current general status of EV-mediated cancer diagnosis and the second one showing recent applications of such EV-mediated diagnosis for six important human-specific cancers, i.e., lung, breast, prostate, colorectal, ovary and pancreatic cancers. However, the promising perspective of finally succeeding in the worldwide quest for the much-needed early cancer diagnosis has to be moderated by the many remaining challenges left to solve before achieving the efficient clinical translation of the constantly increasing scientific knowledge.

Exosomes as A Next-Generation Diagnostic and Therapeutic Tool in Prostate Cancer

“…Increased survivin levels corresponded to higher Gleason scores, regardless of recurrence or BPH, making survivin a potential exosomal marker for early prostate cancer detection [ 54 ]. Using liquid biopsies potentially provides several benefits, including comfort, repeatability, less complexity in acquisition, and low cost, compared to tissue biopsies [ 81 ]. Thus, frequent samples can be taken to follow the progression of disease and therapeutic response, ultimately impacting patient survival outcomes.…”

The integrated comprehension of lncRNA HOXA-AS3 implication on human diseases

“…Based on the several deficiencies of biopsy tissues, non-invasive and minimally invasive body fluid assessments are more conducive to early disease identification, more convenient for monitoring disease prognosis Fig. 1 In hepatocellular carcinoma, HOXA-AS3 exerted its functions in regulating cell proliferation, invasion, and migration by interacting with miR-29c to upregulate BMP1 expression or combining with miR-455-5p to increase PD-L1 level repeatedly, and more helpful in guiding timely intervention and treatment [65][66][67][68][69]. Consequently, it is necessary to explore further the specificity and stability of HOXA-AS3 expression in biological samples with less invasive (such as blood and urine) in different diseases.…”

Multi-Omics Integrative Approach of Extracellular Vesicles: A Future Challenging Milestone

“…Several diagnostic markers are being identified at RNA, protein and metabolic level of EVs in a wide range of cancers [ 26 ], such as colorectal cancer [ 27 , 28 ], prostatic cancer [ 29 , 30 ], lung cancers [ 31 , 32 ], breast cancer [ 33 , 34 ], as well as in many other diseases, such as pulmonary diseases [ 35 , 36 , 37 ], neurodegenerative diseases [ 38 , 39 ] and others. In fact, the most pursued objective in EVs biomarker discovery is the diagnosis of early-stage diseases by circulating vesicles from blood, urine or plasma, referred to as “liquid-biopsy”, as easily accessible biological fluids [ 40 ]. Furthermore, EVs also possess a powerful therapeutic potential as they could be used as direct therapeutics or loaded with active pharmaceutical molecules [ 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ].…”