Exosomes provide a protective and enriched source of miRNA for biomarker profiling compared to intracellular and cell-free blood

By Lesley Cheng, R. Sharples, Benjamin J Scicluna, Andrew F. Hill. Journal of Extracellular Vesicles, 2014

769 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Introduction microRNA (miRNA) are small non-coding RNA species that are transcriptionally processed in the host cell and released extracellularly into the bloodstream. Normally involved in post-transcriptional gene silencing, the deregulation of miRNA has been shown to influence pathogenesis of a number of diseases. Background Next-generation deep sequencing (NGS) has provided the ability to profile miRNA in biological fluids making this approach a viable screening tool to detect miRNA biomarkers. However, collection and handling procedures of blood needs to be greatly improved for miRNA analysis in order to reliably detect differences between healthy and disease patients. Furthermore, ribonucleases present in blood can degrade RNA upon collection rendering extracellular miRNA at risk of degradation. These factors have consequently decreased sensitivity and specificity of miRNA biomarker assays. Methods Here, we use NGS to profile miRNA in various blood components and identify differences in profiles within peripheral blood compared to cell-free plasma or serum and extracellular vesicles known as exosomes. We also analyse and compare the miRNA content in exosomes prepared by ultracentrifugation methods and commercial exosome isolation kits including treating samples with RNaseA. Conclusion This study demonstrates that exosomal RNA is protected by RNaseA treatment and that exosomes provide a consistent source of miRNA for disease biomarker detection.

Subfields: Cancer Research, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7e05cc4509d07d089736e320472968113c7dcbaf

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Citations in the corpus

Obstacles and opportunities in the functional analysis of extracellular vesicle RNA – an ISEV position paper (2017, background): “obtained from the same donor.[42] Plasma mainly contains EV originally present in circulating blood and is therefore the preferred source when studying”
CANCER-ASSOCIATED FIBROBLAST EXOSOMES REGULATE SURVIVAL AND PROLIFERATION OF PANCREATIC CANCER CELLS (2016, positive): “Exosomes contain mRNA, DNA, proteins, and are enriched with miRNA (14).”
EVpedia: a community web portal for extracellular vesicles research (2015, background): “…biological fluids, such as amniotic fluid, ascites, breast milk, plasma, saliva, semen, serum and urine (Asea et al., 2008; Caby et al., 2005; Cheng et al., 2014a, b; Dai et al., 2008; George et al., 1982; Lässer et al., 2011; Poliakov et al., 2009; Raj et al., 2012; Witwer et al., 2013).”
The biology, function, and biomedical applications of exosomes (2020, positive): “The exosomal RNAs may be protected from degradation by blood-derived ribonucleases (226) and, combined with superior systemic retention comparedwith liposomes, this could allow exosomes to exert their function at distant sites.”
The Tumor Microenvironment: A Milieu Hindering and Obstructing Antitumor Immune Responses (2020, background): “These miRNAs like other RNA species are preserved in exosomes from enzymatic degradation (196).”
ExoCarta: A web-based compendium of exosomal cargo (2015, neutral): “More importantly, exosomes are detected in bodily fluids and are known to be highly stable reservoirs of disease biomarkers [9-11] prompting numerous studies aimed at cataloging the exosomal proteins, RNAs and lipids using integrated high-throughput OMICS techniques [12].”