Abstract
Precision and personalized medicine advancements, allow to tailor the clinical approach, depending on the makeup of patients’ DNA and expression issues. Liquid biopsy and the chance to use selected biomarkers from biological fluids, could strongly contribute to the improvement of an increasingly patient-oriented method, avoiding invasive assays and tissue biopsies. Among the most important effectors of cellular interplay, Extracellular Vesicles (EVs), are on the rise for the possibility to be considered as powerful biomarkers, although the severe limitations of standard tools hinder their complete understanding and use. In fact, isolation, enrichment and sorting techniques available are often instrument- and time-heavy, and require a high amount of sample. Moreover, EV characterization needs various steps of sample pre-processing, involving e.g. centrifugation, which can influence stability, size and cargo release. The technological gap in handling this kind of sample, in its complexity and heterogeneity, limits the exploitation of such an information-rich pool, both for diagnostic and medical research applications. RESOLVE aims to move forward in disentangling EVs heterogeneity going beyond limitations imposed by standard methods of analysis. In particular, using Flow-Field Flow-Fractionation (4F) and on-chip detection for their full characterization, our purpose is to build a benchtop-ready device able to identify arrays of biomarkers associated to the size and to different functions of EVs subclasses, customizable according to clinical needs. A key point will be the effort in removing all the highly impacting processing procedures to operate in the most native conditions possible, reducing time and cost, and preserving EV morphology and properties.
Departmental scientific manager
Valentina Marassi (local coordinator)
Partnership
CNR – NANOTEC Lecce (Italy) [sub unit San Raffaele Milano]