Highly efficient and automated isolation technology for extracellular vesicles microRNA

Abstract

MicroRNA (miRNA) in extracellular vesicles (EVs) has great potential to be a promising marker in liquid biopsy. However, the present EV isolation methods, such as ultracentrifugation, have complicated and long-time operation, which impedes research on EV miRNA. The downstream complex miRNA extraction process will also significantly increase the detection cycle and loss. We first established a simple automated technique to efficiently extract target miRNAs in EVs from plasma based on Fe3O4@TiO2 beads with high affinity and capture efficiency. We combined a heat-lysis method for quick and simple EV miRNA extraction and detection. The results indicated that our method has more RNA yield than TRIzol or a commercial kit and could complete EV enrichment and miRNA extraction in 30 min. Through the detection of miRNA-21, healthy people and lung cancer patients were distinguished, which verified the possibility of the application in clinical detection. The automated isolation technology for EV miRNA has good repeatability and high throughput, with great application potential in clinical diagnosis.

Rapid isolation method for extracellular vesicles based on Fe3O4@ZrO2

“…Fe 3 O 4 @TiO 2 beads greatly reduce the isolation time of EV and reduce the loss of EV during the concentration step without affecting its proteome ( Gao et al, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2021a ). In comparing the performance of the Fe 3 O 4 @ZrO 2 technique with the established Fe 3 O 4 @TiO 2 method, we observed similarities in operation principles and EV sizes captured ( Di et al, 2022 ). Notably, our results suggest a higher binding efficiency of ZrO 2 to phosphate groups compared to TiO 2 .…”

“…Qin et al further proposed a strategy for isolating EVs from human urine using a method based on UC and TiO 2 , obtaining high-quality EVs suitable for LC-MS/MS analysis ( Xiang et al, 2021 ). Additionally, Di et al (2022) utilized Fe 3 O 4 @TiO 2 beads for magnetic separation based on TiO 2 , enabling the direct heating and efficient release of target miRNAs from isolated EVs for subsequent analysis. These research advances open up new possibilities for the application of metal oxides in EVs isolation, providing more flexible and effective means for both research and clinical applications of EVs.…”

Rapid classification of micro-particles using multi-angle dynamic light scatting and machine learning approach

“…Bals et al (2022) used scanning electron microscopy images to record contrast ratio and resolution, then classified the acquired images by machine learning based on the shape and size of micro-particles. The above methods are limited to imaging analysis and require more space for expensive detection instruments (Klug et al, 2019;Di et al, 2022;Yue et al, 2022).…”