All About Exosomes

What are exosomes?

Exosomes are small extracellular vesicles (EVs) that all cells secrete, originating from multivesicular endosomes. Each exosome contains a diverse array of proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids that can mediate intercellular communication and contain a molecular signature of the parental cells. Exosomes are typically 50–150 nm in diameter.

How can exosomes be used?

As the boom in exosome research shows, the applications of exosomes are vast. Promising opportunities span therapeutics, diagnostics, regenerative medicine, and more.

Therapeutics
One of the most exciting applications of exosomes is in cancer research. Exosomes derived from cancer cells have been found to efficiently change local and distant microenvironments in tumors. And today, exosomes are employed in several clinical trials both for cancer treatment and cancer vaccination platforms.

Diagnostics
By analyzing the contents of exosomes, they can also be used for early detection of biomarkers from pathological pathways.

Regenerative Medicine
Exosomes are a popular modality in regenerative medicine, currently being used as a therapy for tissue regeneration in all major organs. They have been seen to reduce inflammation and apoptosis, while promoting proliferation and angiogenesis.

Why has isolating exosomes been a challenge?

Extracting exosomes is one of the biggest challenges in the field. The current “Fool’s Gold” Standard in exosome isolation is ultracentrifugation. However, the technique is laborious, taking upwards of 12 continuous hours of one lab technician’s time to process six samples. Furthermore, ultracentrifugation yields less pure and less viable exosomes due to its harsh nature with no ability to select for subtypes.

By comparison, Clara takes exosome isolation to the next level with our ExoRelease^TM Isolation Platform. With Clara, researchers are able to isolate biologically active exosomes with the highest level of speed, precision, and purity. Clara’s process has the added advantage of being able to select for exosomal subtypes thanks to affinity purification.

Clara’s platform is virtually limitless in its application. ExoRelease^TM is scalable to both academic and industrial scales and has been validated for use in downstream applications involving DNA, RNA, and protein sequencing.