Low-cost electrochemical paper-based device for exosome detection

Exosomes are vesicles released by healthy and cancer cells into the extracellular matrix and bodily fluid. Cancer cell-derived exosomes have attracted much attention in early-stage detection and prognostication of treatment response. Thus, detecting exosomes is of great interest to biology and medicine. However, many conventional detection methods require high-cost equipment and centralized laboratory facilities, making diagnostics inaccessible in limited-resource settings. This study reports a proof-of-concept low-cost electrochemical paper-based analytical device to quantify both the total bulk and cancer cell-derived exosomes in cell culture media. The device employs a sandwich immune assay design, where exosomes are initially captured using the electrode-bound generic antibodies (i.e. CD9) and subsequently detected via ovarian cancer-specific CA125 antibodies. Our proposed device quantifies the total bulk exosome concentration with a detection limit of 9.3 × 10⁷ exosomes per mL and ovarian cancer cell-derived exosomes with a detection limit of 7.1 × 10⁸ exosomes per mL, with a relative standard deviation of <10% (n = 3). We suggest that this low-cost and simple electrochemical paper-based device could be an alternative tool for detecting disease-specific exosomes in biological samples with the potential to be further developed for point-of-care diagnosis.