Owecki Wojciech, Wojtowicz Karolina, Nijakowski Kacper
Student's Scientific Group in Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, 60-812 Poznan, Poland.
The Student Scientific Society, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, 60-806 Poznan, Poland.
Cells. 2025 Mar 11;14(6):411. doi: 10.3390/cells14060411.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Evidence indicates that extracellular vesicles are involved in cancer development and may be used as promising biomarkers in cancer detection. Concomitantly, saliva constitutes a non-invasive and inexpensive source of biomarkers. This systematic review investigates the use of salivary extracellular vesicles in detecting cancers located outside of the head and neck. PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Embase were thoroughly searched from database inception to 16 July 2024. Data from sixteen eligible studies were analyzed, including glioblastoma, lung, esophageal, gastric, prostate, hepatocellular, breast, and pancreatobiliary tract cancers. The findings highlight strong diagnostic potential for lung and esophageal cancers, where specific exosomal RNAs and proteins demonstrated high accuracy in distinguishing cancer patients from healthy individuals. Additionally, biomarkers in glioblastoma showed prognostic value, while those in hepatocellular and pancreatobiliary cancers exhibited potential for early detection. However, gastric and prostate cancer biomarkers showed limited reliability, and breast cancer biomarkers require further validation. In conclusion, salivary extracellular vesicles present potential in non-invasive detection across multiple cancer types; however, their diagnostic power needs further research, including standardization and large-scale validation.
癌症是全球主要死因之一。有证据表明，细胞外囊泡参与癌症发展，可能作为癌症检测中很有前景的生物标志物。与此同时，唾液是一种非侵入性且成本低廉的生物标志物来源。本系统综述调查了唾液细胞外囊泡在检测头颈部以外部位癌症中的应用。从数据库建立到2024年7月16日，对PubMed、科学网、Scopus和Embase进行了全面检索。分析了16项符合条件的研究数据，包括胶质母细胞瘤、肺癌、食管癌、胃癌、前列腺癌、肝细胞癌、乳腺癌和胰胆管癌。研究结果突出了唾液细胞外囊泡对肺癌和食管癌具有很强的诊断潜力，其中特定的外泌体RNA和蛋白质在区分癌症患者和健康个体方面显示出很高的准确性。此外，胶质母细胞瘤中的生物标志物具有预后价值，而肝细胞癌和胰胆管癌中的生物标志物具有早期检测潜力。然而，胃癌和前列腺癌的生物标志物可靠性有限，乳腺癌的生物标志物需要进一步验证。总之，唾液细胞外囊泡在多种癌症类型的非侵入性检测中具有潜力；然而，其诊断能力需要进一步研究，包括标准化和大规模验证。
