Extracellular Vesicle Isolation Methods

Efficient isolation of extracellular vesicles (EVs) holds the premises of exosome (normally small EVs) research, and a method that can extract intact and pure exosomes from real samples is the first step to conduct exosome-based liquid biopsies and therapeutics. The past years have witnessed various methods for exosome isolation, which show different effects on the morphology and biological activity of EVs. Therefore, it is particularly important to obtain high-purity EVs for subsequent studies by choosing a suitable exosome isolation method. By means of the physical, chemical, and biochemical properties of EVs, a variety of new techniques have been developed for exosome isolation, such as ultracentrifugation (UC), size-exclusion chromatography (SEC), ultrafiltration (UF), precipitation, and affinity-based isolation and microfluidic-based techniques.