Isolating Urinary Extracellular Vesicles as Biomarkers for Diabetic Disease

Extracellular vesicles are lipid bilayer enclosed structures secreted by all cell types. Their cargo includes proteins, lipids, RNAs, and DNA, which reflect the physiological state of their cells of origin. Recently, urinary extracellular vesicles have emerged as a valuable source of biomarkers for kidney and systemic disease.Unfortunately, all existing methods for extracellular vesicle isolation from urine are time consuming and/or expensive. Thus, they are not adaptable to large-scale studies and unsuitable for clinical use without special equipment in the laboratory. Recently, our group has devised a set of new, quick, simple, and inexpensive techniques, based on hydrostatic filtration dialysis (HFD) of urine extremely suitable for diagnostic purposes. This novel approach represents a great potential for new diagnostics and understanding disease biology in general and brings the biomarker detection to the scope of all laboratories.