Wong CH, Chen YC. Clinical significance of exosomes as potential biomarkers in cancer. World J Clin Cases 2019; 7(2): 171-190 [PMID: 30705894 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v7.i2.171]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Yang-Chao Chen, PhD, School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. yangchaochen@cuhk.edu.hk
Research Domain of This Article
Medicine, Research & Experimental
Article-Type of This Article
Systematic Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Clin Cases. Jan 26, 2019; 7(2): 171-190 Published online Jan 26, 2019. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v7.i2.171
Clinical significance of exosomes as potential biomarkers in cancer
Chi-Hin Wong, Yang-Chao Chen
Chi-Hin Wong, Yang-Chao Chen, School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Yang-Chao Chen, Shenzhen Research Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China
Author contributions: Chen YC and Wong CH wrote the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no competing interests.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yang-Chao Chen, PhD, School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. yangchaochen@cuhk.edu.hk
Telephone: +852-39431100 Fax: +852-26035123
Received: October 25, 2018 Peer-review started: October 25, 2018 First decision: November 28, 2018 Revised: December 27, 2018 Accepted: January 3, 2019 Article in press: January 3, 2019 Published online: January 26, 2019
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Exosomes, which are widely distributed in body fluids, including blood, bile, urine and saliva, are microvesicles of 30-100 nm diameter in size. Cancer-derived exosomes carry a wide variety of DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids, and may serve as novel biomarkers in cancer.
Research motivation
Exosomes may function as exosomal biomarkers in cancer diagnosis and prognosis.
Research objectives
To summarize the performance of exosomal biomarkers in cancer diagnosis and prognosis.
Research methods
Relevant studies in the literature were identified using the PubMed database. QUADAS-2 and REMARK were used to assess the quality of the included studies. For diagnostic biomarkers, 47 biomarkers and 2240 patients from 30 studies were included.
Research results
These exosomal biomarkers had excellent diagnostic ability in various types of cancer, with good sensitivity and specificity. A total of 50 biomarkers and 4797 patients from 42 studies were included for the prognostic markers. We observed that exosomal biomarkers had prognostic values in overall survival, disease-free survival and recurrence-free survival.
Research conclusions
Exosomes could be potential biomarkers in cancer diagnosis and prognosis.
Research perspectives
Further large prospective studies are needed to clarity the performance of exosomal biomarkers in cancer diagnosis and prognosis, through exosomes can be potential biomarkers in cancer diagnosis and prognosis.
