Mursla Bio will present its novel tissue-specific Extracellular Vesicle (EV) isolation technology, NEXPLOR, at the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) annual meeting, paving the way for a new approach to biomarker discovery in liquid biopsy and precision medicine.
Extracellular Vesicles are released by every cell in the body, acting as a snapshot of cellular biological activity. They can be conveniently found in biofluids such as blood and present an ideal avenue for the future of noninvasive disease detection and prevention, including cancer.
Tissue-derived EVs are extremely scarce compared to all other EVs found in circulation at the same time. This makes it challenging to locate and extract their molecular and cellular information. For instance, nearly all EVs present in a blood draw will be derived from blood cells such as platelets, erythrocytes or immune cells, with a minute portion coming from tissues such as liver, lung or kidney. Conventional isolation techniques cannot distinguish between EVs based on their origin, thus limiting progress in disease biomarker discovery.
To address these challenges, Mursla Bio has developed a novel and robust method to isolate tissue-specific EVs from blood, together with a workflow to analyse their diverse multi-omics content. At ISEV2023, taking place 17-21 May, Seattle, US, Mursla Bio will showcase its novel technology NEXPLOR and how it has been applied to discover novel liver cancer biomarkers for the surveillance of individuals at high risk.
Dr Tomás Dias (PhD), CTO, Mursla Bio commented: “NEXPLOR can isolate specific sub-populations of EVs, such as liver-specific EVs, from complex fluids like blood. This is an important step forward to develop EV-based liquid biopsy and precision medicine applications.”
NEXPLOR is part of Mursla Bio’s ExoPheno™ platform and has been engineered to improve the translation of EV-based diagnostics into clinics. This complements its ultrasensitive validation technology, NEXOS, which has been designed to offer a high throughput and clinically compatible In Vitro Diagnostics test from the newly discovered panel of tissue-EV biomarkers.
Pierre Arsène, Founder and CEO of Mursla Bio, added: “Imagine you could examine any bodily tissue, at any time, without resorting to invasive procedures. This would completely transform how we manage cancer and chronic disease. The liquid biopsy field has been built on that principle. Unfortunately, existing approaches based on circulating free DNA have been restrictive, providing only a limited snapshot of cellular activity. This is because they are not tissue-specific and overlook the complexity of biological processes. We believe our method marks a substantial progression and have initiated a clinical study to deliver our first liquid biopsy test, which we expect to complete by early 2024. We aim to launch in the US in 2025.”
ISEV2023 presentation and poster:
- High-yield immunomagnetic isolation of EV sub-populations for downstream applications (LB3.7, oral presentation): Vagueiro et al. present NEXPLOR, a novel methodology and workflow for the isolation of EV sub-populations as a promising alternative to current isolation methods, with high yield and specificity for functional EVs.
- Targeted capture of hepatocyte-derived extracellular vesicles from plasma and subsequent multi-omic analysis reveals potential diagnostic markers of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (PF09.09, poster): Figueiras et al. show how NEXPLOR technology combined with proprietary tissue-specific markers accurately and precisely captures hepatocyte-derived EVs from human plasma in healthy individuals and diseased patients for biomarker discovery in HCC and potential other applications.
