Laboratory of Experimental Clinical Chemistry, Amsterdam UMC location University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Biomedical Engineering and Physics, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Vesicle Observation Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Biological Nanochemistry Research Group, Institute of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
J Thromb Haemost. 2023 Aug;21(8):2032-2044. doi: 10.1016/j.jtha.2023.04.042. Epub 2023 May 16.
Concentrations of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in body fluids are being explored as disease biomarkers. Most laboratories use flow cytometry to characterize single EVs at high throughput. A flow cytometer (FCM) detects light scattering and fluorescence intensities of EVs. However, detection of EVs by flow cytometry is complicated for 2 reasons. First, EVs are small and have weak light scattering and fluorescence signals compared to cells and are, therefore, hard to detect. Second, FCMs differ in sensitivity and provide data in arbitrary units, which complicates data interpretation. Due to the mentioned challenges, the measured concentration of EVs by flow cytometry is cumbersome to compare between FCMs and institutes. To improve comparability, standardization and development of traceable reference materials to calibrate all aspects of an FCM are needed, as are interlaboratory comparison studies. Within this article, we will provide an overview of the standardization of EV concentration measurements, including the current effort to introduce robust calibration of FCMs, thereby enabling comparable concentration measurements of EVs, which in turn can be used to establish clinically relevant reference ranges of EV concentrations in blood plasma and other body fluids.
细胞外囊泡(EVs)在体液中的浓度正在被探索作为疾病生物标志物。大多数实验室使用流式细胞仪以高通量的方式对单个 EV 进行特征分析。流式细胞仪(FCM)检测 EV 的光散射和荧光强度。然而,由于两个原因,FCM 检测 EV 较为复杂。首先,与细胞相比,EV 较小,光散射和荧光信号较弱,因此难以检测。其次,FCM 在灵敏度方面存在差异,并以任意单位提供数据,这使得数据解释变得复杂。由于上述挑战,FCM 之间和研究所之间通过流式细胞术测量的 EV 浓度难以进行比较。为了提高可比性,需要标准化和开发可追溯的参考物质来校准 FCM 的各个方面,以及进行实验室间的比较研究。在本文中,我们将概述 EV 浓度测量的标准化,包括目前引入 FCM 稳健校准的努力,从而能够对 EV 的浓度进行可比测量,这反过来又可以用于建立临床相关的 EV 浓度在血浆和其他体液中的参考范围。
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