Technologies

Unmet Need:Translating disease-derived exosome detection to early diagnostic applications

Normal as well as pathological cells constitutively release a group of specific membrane vesicles carrying rich identity information about their cells of origin. These extracellular vesicles (EV) are composed of small exosomes (40~120 nm) and large microvesicles (300-1000 nm); they are distributed in many body fluids such as blood, saliva and urine for intercellular communication. Disease-derived exosomes detected in the blood of cancer patients correlate well with tumor progression, angiogenesis and metastasis. Therefore, higher levels of circulating cancer-derived exosomes and their cargo proteins have a great potential to serve as liquid biopsy tools to achieve a higher diagnostic and prognostic efficiency in the early diagnosis of cancers. Despite their potential clinical significance, translating disease-derived exosome detection to applications for the early diagnosis of cancers has been challenging.

The Technology:Two-dimensional isotachophoretic analysis of specific disease-derived exosomes

Through this invention, WSU inventors present for the first time the application of isotachophoresis (ITP) technology to the rapid isolation and detection of exosomes derived from a prostate cancer cell line and exosomes derived from healthy serum samples in a single assay, followed by isotachophoretic analysis of a selected panel of exosomal protein biomarkers.