RESUMEN
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane-derived, tiny vesicles produced by all cells that range from 50 to several hundreds of nanometers in diameter and are used as a means of intercellular communication. They are emerging as promising diagnostic and therapeutic tools for a variety of diseases. There are two main biogenesis processes used by cells to produce EVs with differences in size, composition, and content. Due to their high complexity in size, composition, and cell origin, their characterization requires a combination of analytical techniques. This project involves the development of a new generation of multiparametric analytical platforms with increased throughput for the characterization of subpopulations of EVs. To achieve this goal, the work starts from the nanobioanalytical platform (NBA) established by the group, which allows an original investigation of EVs based on a combination of multiplexed biosensing methods with metrological and morphomechanical analyses by atomic force microscopy (AFM) of vesicular targets trapped on a microarray biochip. The objective was to complete this EV investigation with a phenotypic and molecular analysis by Raman spectroscopy. These developments enable the proposal of a multimodal and easy-to-use analytical solution for the discrimination of EV subsets in biological fluids with clinical potential.