The role of tumor cell-derived extracellular vesicles in cancer diagnosis and immunotherapies

Abstract

Cancer is a genetic and metabolic disease caused by mutations of genes, dysregulated metabolism, or environmental factors. Since the cancer rate is among the highest in the 20th century and the incidence keeps elevating in the 21st century, it has been expected that 25% of the population will suffer from cancer during their lifetime. However, as the most promising strategy to treat cancer, only 15-20% of patients achieve durable results with immunotherapy. Thus, we still need to find a new therapeutic and detection strategy to make up for the shortcomings of immunotherapy. Tumor cell-derived extracellular vesicles (t-EVs) may be a great helper. This review summarizes the potentials of tumor cell- derived extracellular vesicles used as the cancer biomarkers in cancer early diagnosis and prognostic monitoring and introduces the combined therapy between t-EVs and existing cancer immunotherapies.