Table 1.

Comparison of different exosome isolation techniques.

Isolation technique	Underlying mechanism	Working scalability	Sample purity	Advantage	Disadvantage	Reference
Polymer co-precipitation	Hydrophobicity of protein and lipid	Small	Low	Cheap, fast, easy	Contaminated by co-precipitated particles	(52)
Affinity-based isolation	Affinity	Small	High	Fast, easy	Expensive, contaminated by microvesicles	(53)
Ultrafiltration	Molecular weight	Medium	Medium to high	Fast, easy	Plugged up easily by vesicles	(54, 55)
Size exclusion chromatography	Size and molecular weight	Flexible	High	Cheap, easy, reproducible	Time-consuming	(56, 57)
Immunoaffinity capture	Immunoaffinity-antibody	Small	High	Fast, easy	Expensive, contaminated by magnetic beads	(58)
	Immunoaffinity-aptamer	Small	High	Cheap, fast, easy	Low recovery	(3, 59)
Ultracentrifugation	Differential density	Flexible	Medium	Well-established and commonly used	Time-consuming, ultraspeed centrifuge required	(49, 50)