To increase cancer patient survival and wellbeing, diagnostic assays need to be able to detect cases earlier, be applied more frequently, and preferably before symptoms develop. The expansion of blood biopsy technologies such as detection of circulating tumour cells and cell-free DNA has shown clinical promise for this. Extracellular vesicles released into the blood from tumour cells may offer a snapshot of the whole of the tumour. They represent a stable and multifaceted complex of a number of different types of molecules including DNA, RNA and protein. These represent biomarker targets that can be collected and analysed from blood samples, offering great potential for early diagnosis. In this review we discuss the benefits and challenges of the use of extracellular vesicles in this context and provide recommendations on where this developing field should focus their efforts to bring future success.
Pink, Ryan C. Beaman, Ellie-May Samuel, Priya Brooks, Susan A. Carter, David R.F.
Department of Biological and Medical Sciences
Year of publication: 2022Date of RADAR deposit: 2022-01-11
“Copyright © 2022, Springer Nature. Users may view, print, copy, download and text and data-mine the content, for the purposes of academic research, subject always to the full conditions of use. Any further use is subject to permission from Springer Nature.”