Table 2.

Diagnostic and prognostic applications of EVs in cancer metastasis

Categories of detection	Sources of the detected EVs	EV cargo	Detection methods	Implications of study	References
Detection of EV proteins	Circulating EVs from CRC patients	CD147	ExoScreen: amplified luminescent proximity homogenous assay with photosensitiser beads	ExoScreen is potentially superior to immunoblotting and ELISA in EV detection. CD147 detection can detect early CRC better than current biomarkers, CA19‐9 and CEA.	Yoshioka et al 89
	Prostate, lung, liver and colonic cancer cells	Phosphoproteins within EVs	Identification of SERS peak due to oscillations of the P‐O bond during protein phosphorylation	EV monitoring can be performed on patients’ serum.	Dong et al 90
	Plasma of CRC patients	ITGBL1	ELISA	ITGBL1‐rich EVs in plasma correlate with CRC metastasis	Ji et al 91
	Ascitic fluid of ovarian cancer patients	TGM2, U2AF1, U2AF2, HNRHPU	Proteome analysis with and without CPLL treatment, and analysis of silylated samples via mass spectrometry	Diagnostic of malignant ascites in ovarian cancer	Shender et al 92
	Serum of stage IV melanoma patients	MIA, S100B	Immunoblotting and ELISA for detecting MIA and S100B	Raised MIA and S100B have diagnostic values and are associated with shorter median survival	Alegre et al 93
	NSCLC patients post‐chemoradiation	Tspan8	SEM and NanoSight particle‐tracking paired with Western blot analysis to detect EV markers	Tspan8 level is predictive of subsequent distant metastasis	Liu et al 94
	Serum of pancreatic cancer patients	GPC1‐positve crExo	Mass spectrometry	GPC1‐positve crExo detection surpasses MRI in early pancreatic cancer, and is predictive of survival	Melo et al 95
Detection of EV nucleic acids	CSF of medulloblastoma (MB) patients	miR‐1290, miR‐125a/b	Microarray analysis with RT‐PCR analysis	miRNAs present in CSF of MB patients are potential biomarkers of disease	Shalaby et al 99
	Serum of HCC patients	miR‐638	qRT‐PCR analysis	Lower serum EV miR‐638 predicts poorer prognosis in HCC patients	Shi et al 100
	Plasma from metastatic prostate cancer patients	miR‐375, miR‐141	qRT‐PCR verification and analysis	miR‐375 and miR‐141 can differentiate aggressive tumours from more indolent ones and those less likely to metastasize	Bryant et al 101
	Peripheral samples of glioblastoma patients	HOTAIR	qRT‐PCR with Western blot analysis for verification of CD63 on EVs	HOTAIR levels can predict treatment response of tumours to BET inhibitors	Tan et al 102
	Plasma from cancer patients with bone metastasis	miRNAs associated with bone metastasis	Next‐generation sequencing as well as survival and progression analysis	Identification of tdEV‐associated miRNAs which contributes to bone metastasis and progression	Giavaresi et al (NCT03895216)
Detection of total EV counts	Castration‐resistant prostate cancer cells; metastatic colorectal cancer; metastatic breast cancer	NA (EV counts were used rather than EV cargo detection)	ACCEPT software for quantifying tdEVs from digitally stored CellSearch® images	Tumour‐derived EV counts have equivalent prognostic value as CTCs, and can further stratify prognosis for patients with favourable CTCs	Nanou et al 15