Introduction: Prostate cancer cell (PCa) extracellular vesicle (EV) production is an important component of cell communication processes and may contribute to disease progression. EVs contain representative markers of their source cells and may display differential expression in malignant compared to healthy cells. This has significant value in non-invasive diagnostic and prognostic clinical tests. To develop this methodology, we have characterised EVs from a panel of PCa cell lines and EVs isolated from PCa patients.
Methods: EVs were isolated through differential centrifugation and size-exclusion chromatography. They were assessed for size and distribution by TEM and NTA, and protein composition characterised by IHC and Western blotting. Matched tissue samples were used to determine the potential of EVs for diagnosis and prognosis of PCa.
Results: We were able to isolate EVs from a panel of prostate cell lines and patient plasma samples. The protein composition of cell line EVs represented their source cells and were comparable to EVs isolated from patient samples. Using matched tissue from patients with known clinical history, we showed the potential for PCa EVs to be used in diagnosis and prognosis of prostate cancer.
Summary/Conclusion: This study highlights the biomarker potential for EVs in prostate cancer and enables readily available cell lines to be used in the development of sensitive and specific detection tools for the diagnosis and prognosis of prostate cancer using EVs.