title: Biobanking of Exosomes in the Era of Precision Medicine: Are We There Yet?
abstract: The emerge of personalized medicine demands high-quality human biospecimens with appropriate clinical annotation, especially in complex diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, and metabolic alterations in which specimen heterogeneity and individual responses often complicate the development of precision therapeutic programs. In the growing field of extracellular vesicles (EVs) research, exosomes (EXOs)--a particular type of EVs--have been proposed as an advantageous diagnostic tool, as effective delivery vehicles and as therapeutic targets. However, the lack of consensus on isolation methods and rigorous criteria to characterize them puts the term EXO into question at the time that might explain some of the controversial results found in the literature. A lack of response in the biobank network to warrant standard optimized procedures for the isolation, characterization, and storage of EXOs will undoubtedly lead to a waste of resources and failure. This review is aimed at highlighting the increasing importance of EXOs for the clinic, especially in the cancer field, and at summarizing the initiatives taken to improve current isolation procedures, classification criteria, and storage conditions of EXOs as an effort to identify technological demands that biobank platforms face for the incorporation of EXOs and other extracellular vesicle fractions as valuable biospecimens for research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences Campus, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan 00936, Puerto Rico. edna.mora2@upr.edu.|University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Juan 00936, Puerto Rico. edna.mora2@upr.edu.
authors.forename: Edna M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Mora
authors.affiliation: Diabetes Research Institute, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA. salvarez@med.miami.edu.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Álvarez-Cubela
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Católica de Valencia "San Vicente Mártir", Valencia 46001, Spain. elisa.oltra@ucv.es.|Instituto Valenciano de Patología (IVP) de la Universidad Católica de Valencia "San Vicente Mártir", Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe (CIPF), Valencia 46012, Spain. elisa.oltra@ucv.es.
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Oltra
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018070:Biological Specimen Banks / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D055252:Cell-Derived Microparticles / Q000145:classification* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D055354:Exosomes / Q000145:classification* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D057285:Precision Medicine / Q000379:methods*
keywords: biobank; biomarker; exogram; exosome; precision medicine