Abstract
Exosomes are a type of cell-secreted nanovesicles that have received significant attention as promising biomarkers for early detection of intractable diseases such as cancer and for evaluating treatment efficacy. Also, expectations on their therapeutic application such as drug delivery system for nucleic acid-based drugs and regenerative medicine using mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosomes are now rising. However, it is technologically difficult to analyze or identify a heterogeneous population of particles ranging from several tens to one hundred nanometers, and hence, there is a growing demand for a new analytical method of nanoparticles among researchers working on extracellular vesicles. In this article, the authors present an analytical platform for nanoparticles, which allows particle immunoelecrophoresis on a microfluidic chip, that has been invented by them and developed jointly with Nikon, mainly focusing on the background of the development and technological outlines. The developed platform allows detection of individual nanoparticles or nanovesicles of less than 50 nm in diameter and enables the characterization of nanoparticles based on indexes such as concentration, diameter, zeta potential, and surface antigenicity.
