About this Research Topic

Background

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have potential applications in precision medicine. EVs is a generic term for non-replicated, lipid bilayer particles released from cells. Other nomenclatures include exosomes, microvesicles (also known as ectosomes or microparticles), apoptotic bodies, oncosomes, migrasomes, nucleosomes, small/large EVs, etc., depending on their biogenesis, cellular origins and/or biophysical properties. In biology, EVs are present in extracellular fluids and play crucial roles in cell-to-cell communication. EVs contain functional proteins (surface ligands, enzymes, signalling molecules), nucleic acids (i.e., mRNAs, miRNAs, and other non-coding RNAs) and lipids (such as phosphatidylserine, glycosylphosphatidylinositol) as part of their cargo or membrane components. Therefore, deeper understanding of EVs bearing particular moieties released from cells in biological and disease states would drive EVs toward applications in precision medicine.

This Research Topic aims to collect work describing EVs applications in the contexts of precision diagnosis and precision treatment. A broad scope for precision diagnosis includes patient classification, therapeutic response monitoring, adverse event and/or prognosis predictions by EVs-containing biomarkers derived from clinically relevant biofluids. For precision treatment, this Research Topic covers studies that address "what, why, where, when, who, how” factors of EVs-based therapy. EVs studies utilizing Omics technologies (e.g., proteomics, transcriptomics, miRNA array) are prioritized in view of high-throughput analysis which would deliver the essential information that facilitates a discovery or support a conclusion.

Specifically, we welcome the submission of Original Research Articles, Reviews, Perspective and Opinion articles focusing on the following areas:

• Omics technologies as part of EVs study, which facilitates a discovery or supports the claims regarding biomarkers, therapeutic targets, functional molecules, mechanism of actions, biological/pathophysiologic processes, or therapeutic responses.
• Comprehensive characterization and comparison of EVs subtypes
• Investigating EVs biomarkers in the context of clinical research
• Large-scale validation of EVs biomarkers using clinically compatible assays, i.e., ELISA, high-resolution flow cytometry, NanoString nCounter, etc.
• Therapeutic efficacy of EVs or EVs-mimics bearing functional moieties with or without genetic engineering
• The modular design of EVs for precision treatment
• EVs as a stem cell-free therapy
• EVs study in the disease models in vitro or in vivo with demonstrating valid clinical correlations
• New concepts involving algorithms, tools, applications, or databases that significantly facilitate EVs study in precision medicine. For example, Omics profiling-based machine learning classification, Connectivity Map (CMap) using EVs derived signatures, a new approach to normalize urinary EVs for liquid biopsy, etc.


This Research Topic encourages the authors to follow the minimal information for studies of extracellular vesicles 2018 (MISEV2018) guidelines established by the International Society of Extracellular Vesicles (www.isev.org) for reporting their EVs study.

Keywords: Diagnosis, Extracellular vesicles, Precision Medicine, Omics, Treatment

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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