Department of Biochemistry and Genetics, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Subcell Biochem. 2021;97:363-374. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-67171-6_13.
Emerging evidences have implicated extracellular vesicles (EVs), nanoparticles secreted by cells, in regulating cancer progression. Several seminal studies on EVs have added an additional layer to the previously unanswered questions in understanding the complexity of diseases such as cancer. It has been observed that EV content is highly heterogenous and it likely reflects the dynamic state of the parent cell. Hence, these nano-sized vesicles have been proposed as reservoirs of cancer biomarkers for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. Due to their presence in almost all biological fluids, ability to display membrane, and sometimes cytosolic, cargo of its host cell and increase in their number during disease states has supported the potential utility of EVs as an alternative to current methods of cancer diagnosis. The following chapter will discuss the use of cancer cell-derived EVs as a resource of tumor specific biomarkers for the early diagnosis of disease. In addition, EVs could also be used in personalised medicine as a resource of predictive biomarkers to understand a patient's response to therapy. Overall, EVs could be exploited as a source of cancer biomarkers and could aid in treatment and stratification options to improve patient survival and quality of life.
越来越多的证据表明，细胞分泌的细胞外囊泡（EVs）在调节癌症进展中发挥作用。关于 EVs 的几项开创性研究为理解癌症等疾病的复杂性增加了一个新的层面，这些疾病以前的问题尚未得到解答。已经观察到 EV 的内容物高度异质，并且可能反映了亲代细胞的动态状态。因此，这些纳米大小的囊泡已被提议作为癌症生物标志物的储存库，用于诊断和预后目的。由于它们几乎存在于所有生物体液中，能够展示其宿主细胞的膜，有时还有胞质内容物，并且在疾病状态下其数量增加，这支持了 EVs 作为癌症诊断当前方法的替代方法的潜力。本章将讨论使用癌细胞衍生的 EVs 作为肿瘤特异性生物标志物资源，用于疾病的早期诊断。此外，EVs 还可以用作预测生物标志物的资源，以了解患者对治疗的反应。总体而言，EVs 可以被开发为癌症生物标志物的来源，并有助于治疗和分层选择，以提高患者的生存率和生活质量。
