Nanomaterial Assisted Exosome Analysis Using Mass Spectrometry

Exosomes, extracellular vesicles (EVs) that play crucial roles in biological processes, have emerged as attractive targets for noninvasive disease diagnosis and monitoring. Mass spectrometry (MS) offers high sensitivity, high throughput, and excellent qualification and quantification capacity, which is the ideal approach for exosome analysis. Nanomaterials’ unique physiochemical properties, controllable morphology, and large surface area make them promising in biological sample pretreatment and detection. They contributed diverse functions to the exosome MS analysis, encompassing substrates for exosome isolation and cargos enrichment, matrices for laser desorption/ionization (LDI), read-out signals and supporters for signal amplification strategies, etc. In this review, recent progress in the applications of nanomaterial in the exosome MS analysis was summarized and a comprehensive discussion on the challenges and perspectives was proposed for the development of an advancing analysis approach of exosomes for the accurate diagnosis and monitoring of diseases.