Analyzing bronchoalveolar fluid derived small extracellular vesicles using single-vesicle SERS for non-small cell lung cancer detection

Sumita T Jonak; Zirui Liu; Jun Liu; Tieyi Li; Brian V D'Souza; J Alan Schiaffino; Scott Oh; Ya-Hong Xie

doi:10.1039/d2sd00109h

Analyzing bronchoalveolar fluid derived small extracellular vesicles using single-vesicle SERS for non-small cell lung cancer detection

Sens Diagn. 2022 Oct 30;2(1):90-99. doi: 10.1039/d2sd00109h. eCollection 2023 Jan 19.

Authors

Sumita T Jonak^{1

2}, Zirui Liu³, Jun Liu³, Tieyi Li³, Brian V D'Souza^{1

2}, J Alan Schiaffino^{1

2}, Scott Oh^{1

2

4}, Ya-Hong Xie^{3

1

2

5}

Affiliations

¹ NurLabs San Antonio TX 78201 USA.
² UCLA Biodesign, University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USA.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USA yhx@ucla.edu (310) 259 6946.
⁴ UCLA Health System, University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USA.
⁵ UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USA.

Abstract

An emerging body of research by biologists and clinicians has demonstrated the clinical application of small extracellular vesicles (sEVs, also commonly referred to as exosomes) as biomarkers for cancer detections. sEVs isolated from various body fluids such as blood, saliva, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid have been used for biomarker discoveries with highly encouraging outcomes. Among the biomarkers discovered are those responsible for multiple cancer types and immune responses. These biomarkers are recapitulated from the tumor microenvironments. Yet, despite numerous discussions of sEVs in scientific literature, sEV-based biomarkers have so far played only a minor role for cancer diagnostics in the clinical setting, notably less so than other techniques such as imaging and biopsy. In this paper, we report the results of a pilot study (n = 10 from each of the patient and the control group) using bronchoalveolar lavage fluid to determine the presence of sEVs related to non-small cell lung cancer in twenty clinical samples examined using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS).