Department of Bioengineering, McGill University, 3775 Rue University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2B4, Canada.
Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 Rue University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T8, Canada.
Nano Lett. 2021 Jun 23;21(12):4895-4902. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c02558. Epub 2021 Jun 1.
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are cell-derived membrane structures that circulate in body fluids and show considerable potential for noninvasive diagnosis. EVs possess surface chemistries and encapsulated molecular cargo that reflect the physiological state of cells from which they originate, including the presence of disease. In order to fully harness the diagnostic potential of EVs, there is a critical need for technologies that can profile large EV populations without sacrificing single EV level detail by averaging over multiple EVs. Here we use a nanofluidic device with tunable confinement to trap EVs in a free-energy landscape that modulates vesicle dynamics in a manner dependent on EV size and charge. As proof-of-principle, we perform size and charge profiling of a population of EVs extracted from human glioblastoma astrocytoma (U373) and normal human astrocytoma (NHA) cell lines.
细胞外囊泡 (EVs) 是源自细胞的膜结构，在体液中循环，具有很大的非侵入性诊断潜力。EVs 具有表面化学性质和包裹的分子货物，反映了它们起源的细胞的生理状态，包括疾病的存在。为了充分利用 EVs 的诊断潜力，迫切需要能够对大量 EV 群体进行分析的技术，而不会通过对多个 EV 进行平均处理而牺牲单个 EV 水平的细节。在这里，我们使用具有可调约束的纳米流控装置将 EV 捕获在自由能景观中，这种方式可以根据 EV 的大小和电荷来调节囊泡的动力学。作为原理验证，我们对从人胶质母细胞瘤星形细胞瘤 (U373) 和正常人星形细胞瘤 (NHA) 细胞系中提取的 EV 群体进行了大小和电荷分析。
