Table 3.
Representative Exosomal Cargoes Other Than miRNAs (Such as Proteins, Lipids, Signaling Molecules, DNA, Mitochondrial DNAs, circRNAs, lncRNAs, Integrin, and Enzyme), Which are Involved in Cancer Progression or in the Interplay in Anticancer Immunity or Served as a Biomarker in Various Cancer Types
| Exosomal Cargo | Cancer Type | Functions (Mechanism)/Usage | Measurement | Reference (First Author/Year Published) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proteins associated with cell adhesion, extracellular matrix, and some signaling molecules (EGFR, GRB2, and SRC) | KRAS-activated or EGFR-activated NSCLC/two cell lines | Abundance differences in exosomal protein cargo detected between two NSCLC cell lines and non-cancer cell lines | Triple SILAC quantitative proteomic strategy | Clark, D.J./201685 |
| Exosome proteome | Four epithelial ovarian cancer cell lines | Signaling biology and biomarker discovery | Mass spectrometry-based proteomics | Sinha, A./201486 |
| Proteins | Several mouse breast tumor lines with a different metastatic propensity | Protein cargo varies significantly between nonmetastatic and metastatic cell-derived exosomes | Comparative proteomic analysis | Gangoda, L./201787 |
| EGF-like repeats and discoidin I-like domain-3 (EDIL-3) protein | Human bladder cancer cell lines and urine of patients with high-grade bladder cancer | Facilitates bladder cancer progression; potential for therapeutic target | Mass spectrometry analysis | Beckham, C. J./201435 |
| Epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) glycoprotein | Pancreatic ductal carcinoma (patients) | Liquid biopsy for EpCAM quantification as prognostication | High sensitivity enzyme linked immunoassay (ELISA) | Giampieri, R./201988 |
| Myoferlin | Breast and pancreatic cancer cell lines | Promotes cancer cell migration and invasion | Proteomic analysis | Blomme, A./201689 |
| Exosomal lipid profiles | Lung cancer/patients’ plasma | Lipid profiles successfully distinguish early-stage lung cancer from healthy subjects | Ultrahigh-resolution Fourier transform mass spectrometry (UHR-FTMS) | Fan, T.W.M./201890 |
| A total of 162 lipids such as diacylglycerol, triacylglycerol, and phosphatidylglycerol | Urinary exosomes from prostate cancer patients | Potentially be used as a prostate cancer biomarker | Flow field-flow fractionation and nanoflow liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry | Yang, J.S./201791 |
| 27-Hydroxycholesterol | ER+ breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) | Possibility of diagnostic value | Capillary liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry | Roberg-Larsen, H./201792 |
| Lipid composition of urinary exosomes (phosphatidylserine 18:1/18:1, phosphatidylserine 18:0–18:2, and lactosylceramide d18:1/16:0) | Prostate cancer patients | Prostate cancer urinary biomarkers | High-throughput mass spectrometry quantitative lipidomic analysis | Skotland, T./201793 |
| Esophageal cancer related gene-4 (ECRG4) mRNA (tumor suppressor) | Oral squamous cell carcinoma patients | Suppresses cell proliferation and inhibits cancerous growth | Ultracentrifugation method | Mao, L./201894 |
| The signaling molecule, Wnt5b | Lung adenocarcinoma cells (A549) | Promotes cancer cell migration and proliferation | MALDI mass spectrometry and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry | Harada, T./201795 |
| Double-stranded DNA | Chronic myeloid leukemia (K-562), colorectal carcinoma (HCT116), and murine melanoma (B16-F10) cell lines | Novel potential biomarker for cancer detection as a surrogate for tumor tissues | dsDNA-specific shrimp DNase and atomic force microscopy (AFM) | Thakur, B. K./201421 |
| Tumor cell-derived DNA | Murine breast cancer cell line E0771 post topotecan treated | Activate dendritic cells via STING signaling | Purified DNA was stained with SYBR Gold following agarose gel electrophoresis and visualized with a UV transilluminator | Kitai, Y./201796 |
| Mitochondrial DNA | ER+ breast cancer xenograft from metastatic hormonal therapy-resistant patient | Promotes exit from dormancy of therapy-induced cancer stem-like cells | Whole-mtDNA amplification and sequencing assays | Sansone, P./201765 |
| Circular RNAs (circRNAs) | Liver cancer cells (MHCC-LM3) | circRNAs able to bind to miRNA; exosome-based cancer biomarkers | RNA-seq analyses | Li, Y./201522 |
| Long noncoding (lnc) RNA ZFAS1 | Gastric cancer cell lines | Enhances gastric cancer cell proliferation and migration | Transmission electron microscopy, Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA), and Western blot. | Pan, L./201797 |
| Alphavbeta3 integrin | Prostate metastatic PC3 and CWR22Pc cancer cells | Promotes a migratory and metastatic phenotype | Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis; BCA followed by immunoblotting | Singh, A./201698 |
| GSTP1 in exosomes from patient’s serum | Anthracycline/taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy-treated breast cancer | Confers drug resistance | Confocal microscopy images; Western blot analyses | Yang, S. J./201799 |