Recent progress on microfluidic devices with incorporated 1D nanostructures for enhanced extracellular vesicle(EV) separation

Introduction Extracellular vesicles (EV s) are lipid-bound vesicles secreted by cells into the extracellular space.There are three types of EVs,including exosomes (30-150 nm)[1],microvesicles(100-1000 nm),and apoptotic bodies (50-4000 nm).EVs are also important intercellular communication carriers in many physiological and pathological processes such as immune response,tumor invasion,and metastasis [2,3].EVs circulate in various body fluids (e.g.,peripheral blood and urine),while carrying genetic information (e.g.,proteins and nucleic acids)from the parent cells [2,4,5].Thus,their source can be identified through gene analysis [6-10].