Extracellular Vesicles lysis: a guide for the release of biomarkers to be used in cancer diagnostics

In the medical field, extracellular vesicles (EVs) are gaining importance as they act as mediators between cells. These nanosized vesicles contain crucial biochemical information about their mother cells in the form of proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. After they are released into the extracellular matrix, they enter the systemic circulation and can be found in all human biofluids. A lipid bilayer protects their contents, distinguishing between internal and external bioinformation. Since EVs reflect the state of the cell of origin, there is exponential attention as potential source of new circulating biomarkers for liquid biopsy. However, using EVs in clinical practice is still hindered by several issues, including the need for standardized, low-cost reagents and lysis protocols that can practically detect internal biomarkers of EVs. The process of lysis is an important step that can impact all subsequent analyses. To help researchers in this field, this article summarizes the most commonly used lysis reagents and protocols for characterizing the content of EVs. The goal of this review is to provide practical guidance for those new to this critical topic, helping them achieve their research objectives. Although the information contained into the blood-circulating vesicles are broad, e.g. nucleic acids, lipids, proteins, etc., the protocols to extract this information might be time-consuming, not applicable for on-site measurements. Herein we deeply investigated and discussed all the major chemical lysis, highlighting strengthen and limitation of each, aimed by the future possibility in realizing integrated portable sensing devices for cancer EVs.