Single-vesicle profiling could push liquid biopsies toward everyday clinical use

Gaby Clark

scientific editor

Meet our editorial team
Behind our editorial process

Robert Egan

associate editor

Meet our editorial team
Behind our editorial process
Editors' notes

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

trusted source

proofread

The GIST
Add as preferred source

Extracellular vesicles, or EVs, are tiny membrane-bound particles released by nearly all cells. They carry proteins, RNA, lipids, and other biological cargo that reflect the condition of their parent cells. Because EVs circulate in blood, urine, and other body fluids, scientists see them as promising biomarkers for diagnosing diseases without invasive biopsies. However, traditional laboratory methods such as Western blotting and ELISA analyze EVs in bulk, averaging signals across millions of particles and often missing rare but clinically important subpopulations.

To address this issue, researchers from Incheon National University, led by Assistant Professor Yoon Ho Roh, from Department of Energy and Chemical Engineering at Incheon National University, along with Assistant Professor Jina Ko from Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of Pennsylvania, reviewed the latest technologies designed to isolate and analyze EVs individually. Their assessment focused on systems that partition single vesicles using substrate-based, droplet-based, and solution-based platforms. This paper was published in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry in February 2026.

The review shows that modern single-EV platforms combine physical separation methods with molecular labeling strategies such as fluorescence tagging, DNA barcoding, and molecular encoding. Some systems also use rolling circle amplification and nanoplasmonic surfaces to greatly boost weak signals, allowing detection of biomarkers at near single-molecule sensitivity. High-throughput droplet microfluidic and sequencing approaches can already profile tens of thousands of vesicles from a single sample, generating richer data than conventional assays.

"By examining vesicles one at a time, we can reveal hidden biological diversity that bulk tests simply cannot detect," explained Dr. Roh. "This opens the door to more sensitive and accurate disease screening."

Clinical studies cited in the review suggest these tools can distinguish healthy individuals from patients with pancreatic cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, and lung adenocarcinoma by identifying rare tumor-derived EVs in plasma. Beyond cancer, the same principles may help track cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and inflammatory conditions using minimally invasive liquid biopsies. Because EVs are stable and widely accessible in body fluids, they could become practical biomarkers for routine monitoring.

Dr. Ko noted, "The future lies in combining multiple layers of information from the same vesicle, including proteins, RNA, lipids, and even physical properties such as stiffness." Such multi-omic profiling could provide a clearer picture of disease mechanisms and patient-specific risk.

Looking ahead, the authors expect artificial intelligence to play a major role in interpreting the vast datasets produced by these systems. Platforms capable of analyzing one million vesicles per test may soon be feasible, improving detection of extremely rare disease signals. Over the next decade, single-EV profiling could move from specialized laboratories into mainstream health care, supporting earlier diagnosis, treatment selection, and truly personalized medicine.

More information

Juhwan Park et al, Advances in single extracellular vesicle characterization and multiplexed profiling, TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.trac.2025.118588

Key concepts

DNA sequencingSurfactants, micelles & vesiclesSingle molecule techniques

Provided by Incheon National University