Systematic Evaluation of PKH Labelling on Extracellular Vesicle Size by Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane vesicles secreted by cells and can modulate biological activities by transferring their content following uptake into recipient cells. Labelling of EVs is a commonly used technique for understanding their cellular targeting and biodistribution. A reliable fluorescent technique needs to preserve the size of EVs since changes in size may alter their uptake and biodistribution. Lipophilic fluorescent dye molecules such as the PKH family have been widely used for EV labelling. Here, the effect of PKH labelling on the size of EVs was systematically evaluated using nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA), which is a widely used technique for determining the size and concentration of nanoparticles. NTA analysis showed a size increase in all the PKH labelling conditions tested. As opposed to lipophilic dye molecules, no significant shift in the size of labelled EVs was detected with luminal binding dye molecules such as 5-(and-6)-carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester (CFDA-SE, hereinafter CFSE). This finding suggests that PKH labelling may not be a reliable technique for the tracking of EVs.