First Clinical Medical College of Lanzhou University, Gansu Key Laboratory of Reproductive Medicine and Embryo, Lanzhou, China.
Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
Curr Drug Metab. 2021;22(2):139-149. doi: 10.2174/1389200221666201110155721.
Ovarian cancer (OC) is one of the deadliest gynecological malignancy. Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is its most common form. OC has both, a poor prognosis and a high mortality rate due to the difficulties of early diagnosis, limitation of current treatment and resistance to chemotherapy. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) is a heterogeneous group of cell-derived submicron vesicles, which can be detected in body fluids, and it can be classified into three main types including exosomes, micro-vesicles, and apoptotic bodies. Cancer cells can produce more EVs than healthy cells. Moreover, the contents of these EVs have been found distinctive from each other. It has been considered that EVs shedding from tumor cells may be implicated in clinical applications, such as a tool for tumor diagnosis, prognosis and potential treatment of certain cancers. In this review, we provide a brief description of EVs. in diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and drug-resistantance of OC. Cancer-related EVs show powerful influences on tumors by various biological mechanisms. However, the contents mentioned above remain in the laboratory stage and there is a lack of large-scale clinical trials, and the maturity of the purification and detection methods is a constraint. In addition, amplification of oncogenes on ecDNA is remarkably prevalent in cancer. It may be possible that ecDNA can be encapsulated in EVs and thus detected by us. In summary, much more research on EVs needs to be performed to reveal breakthroughs in OC and to accelerate the process of its application in clinic.
卵巢癌（OC）是一种致命的妇科恶性肿瘤。上皮性卵巢癌（EOC）是最常见的形式。OC 预后差，死亡率高，这是由于早期诊断困难、现有治疗方法的局限性以及对化疗的耐药性所致。细胞外囊泡（EVs）是一组异质的细胞来源的亚微米囊泡，可以在体液中检测到，它可以分为三种主要类型：外泌体、微泡和凋亡小体。癌细胞产生的 EVs 比健康细胞多。此外，这些 EVs 的内容物也被发现彼此不同。有人认为，肿瘤细胞释放的 EVs 可能与临床应用有关，例如作为肿瘤诊断、预后和某些癌症潜在治疗的工具。在这篇综述中，我们简要描述了 EVs 在 OC 的诊断、预后、治疗和耐药性方面的应用。与癌症相关的 EVs 通过各种生物学机制对肿瘤产生强大的影响。然而，上述内容仍处于实验室阶段，缺乏大规模的临床试验，并且纯化和检测方法的成熟度也是一个限制。此外，ecDNA 上癌基因的扩增在癌症中非常普遍。ecDNA 可能被包裹在 EVs 中，因此可以被我们检测到。总之，需要对 EVs 进行更多的研究，以揭示 OC 的突破，并加速其在临床中的应用进程。
