Our Technology

It has been known for a number of decades that cells in the body normally shed small microvesicles or ‘exosomes’ into the blood and other body fluids as a way of cell-cell communication. We have recently demonstrated that these exosomes contain significant amounts of messengerRNA and microRNA. In fact, exosomes contain most of the transcriptome of their parent cell. Tumor cells are very active at shedding their exosomes into the blood supply. These tumor exosomes and their constituent RNAs present unique genetic information about the tumor concerning its existence, its type, extent of malignancy and susceptibility of cancers to therapeutic treatment. We have been able to show in studies that the isolation of RNA using exosomes can give pure RNA and an easy way to extract high quality RNA from large amounts of serum. Therefore exosome RNA isolation and subsequent analysis presents a marked increase in the diagnostic sensitivity of circulating RNA in blood.