Abstract
Ovarian cancer usually has a poor prognosis because it predominantly presents as high stage disease. New approaches are required to develop more effective early detection strategies and real-time treatment response monitoring. Nano-sized extracellular vesicles (EVs, including exosomes) may provide an approach to enrich tumor biomarker detection and address this clinical need. Exosomes are membranous extracellular vesicles of approximately 100 nm in diameter that have potential to be used as biomarkers and therapeutic delivery tools for ovarian cancer. Exosomal content (proteins and miRNA) is often parent cell specific thus providing an insight or “fingerprint” of the intracellular environment. Furthermore, exosomes can aid cell-cell communication and have the ability to modify target cells by transferring their content. Additionally, via the capacity to evade the immune system and remain stable over long periods in circulation, exosomes have potential as natural drug agents. This review examines the potential role of exosomes in diagnosis, drug delivery and real-time monitoring in ovarian cancer.
Highlights
Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynaecological cancer surpassing other malignancies such as uterine and endometrial cancer [1]
This review examines the potential role of exosomes in diagnosis, drug delivery and realtime monitoring in ovarian cancer
It has been proposed in literature that tumor-derived exosomes may provide a way forward in aiding early diagnosis, drug delivery and monitoring response to treatment in the field of ovarian cancer
Summary
Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynaecological cancer surpassing other malignancies such as uterine and endometrial cancer [1]. These factors combined with the multitude of other abundant proteins (65-97% of total proteins) in the blood render it difficult to identify molecules of interest from tumor cells as there is a high signal-to-noise ratio [51, 52] To tackle this issue, focus has shifted towards extracellular vesicles, exosomes, which provide a better representation of the cellular environment compared to other free molecules. The implications of this challenge and different isolation techniques have been extensively discussed elsewhere [77,78,79,80,81,82,83] Exosomes and their cargo (proteins, miRNA etc.) have been proposed as valuable resources for understanding the metabolic status of cells and can be utilised as prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers in the context of tumors. Kobayashi et al (2014) showed that highly invasive ovarian cancer cell line, SKOV-3 derived exosomes had www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget
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