Talebjedi Bahram, Tasnim Nishat, Hoorfar Mina, Mastromonaco Gabriela F, De Almeida Monteiro Melo Ferraz Marcia
School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada.
Reproductive Sciences, Toronto Zoo, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Front Vet Sci. 2021 Jan 5;7:620809. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2020.620809. eCollection 2020.
Recent decades have seen a growing interest in the study of extracellular vesicles (EVs), driven by their role in cellular communication, and potential as biomarkers of health and disease. Although it is known that embryos secrete EVs, studies on the importance of embryonic EVs are still very limited. This limitation is due mainly to small sample volumes, with low EV concentrations available for analysis, and to laborious, costly and time-consuming procedures for isolating and evaluating EVs. In this respect, microfluidics technologies represent a promising avenue for optimizing the isolation and characterization of embryonic EVs. Despite significant improvements in microfluidics for EV isolation and characterization, the use of EVs as markers of embryo quality has been held back by two key challenges: (1) the lack of specific biomarkers of embryo quality, and (2) the limited number of studies evaluating the content of embryonic EVs across embryos with varying developmental competence. Our core aim in this review is to identify the critical challenges of EV isolation and to provide seeds for future studies to implement the profiling of embryonic EVs as a diagnostic test for embryo selection. We first summarize the conventional methods for isolating EVs and contrast these with the most promising microfluidics methods. We then discuss current knowledge of embryonic EVs and their potential role as biomarkers of embryo quality. Finally, we identify key ways in which microfluidics technologies could allow researchers to overcome the challenges of embryonic EV isolation and be used as a fast, user-friendly tool for non-invasive embryo selection.
近几十年来，细胞外囊泡（EVs）的研究兴趣日益浓厚，这是由其在细胞通讯中的作用以及作为健康和疾病生物标志物的潜力所驱动的。尽管已知胚胎会分泌EVs，但关于胚胎EVs重要性的研究仍然非常有限。这种局限性主要是由于样本量小，可用于分析的EV浓度低，以及分离和评估EVs的繁琐、昂贵且耗时的程序。在这方面，微流控技术是优化胚胎EVs分离和表征的一条有前景的途径。尽管在用于EVs分离和表征的微流控技术方面有了显著改进，但将EVs用作胚胎质量标志物的应用受到了两个关键挑战的阻碍：（1）缺乏胚胎质量的特异性生物标志物，以及（2）评估具有不同发育能力的胚胎中胚胎EVs含量的研究数量有限。本综述的核心目的是确定EVs分离的关键挑战，并为未来研究提供思路，以实现将胚胎EVs分析作为胚胎选择的诊断测试。我们首先总结了分离EVs的传统方法，并将其与最有前景的微流控方法进行对比。然后我们讨论了目前关于胚胎EVs的知识及其作为胚胎质量生物标志物的潜在作用。最后，我们确定了微流控技术可以使研究人员克服胚胎EVs分离挑战并用作快速、用户友好的非侵入性胚胎选择工具的关键方法。
