Microfluidic devices for the rapid Extracellular Vesicles sorting and characterization
Résumé
Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) have been identified to be key modulators of the tumor microenvironment that facilitate communication between cells and potentially induce the formation of metastases. This could make them powerful cancer biomarkers as they are also found in biological fluids such as blood or urine. However, even if these EVs are abundant in biological fluids, they are difficult to extract and characterize. The most frequently used isolation technique, ultracentrifugation, has several drawbacks. For instance, this method is not fully adapted to heterogeneous populations such as EVs, resulting in high contamination levels and low recovery rates. Microfluidic devices offer the possibility of dedicated systems for EV isolation in a more compact format and with low sample consumption.