Combined mass quantitation and phenotyping of intact extracellular vesicles by microarrays

The interest towards extracellular vesicles (EVs) has grown exponentially over the last few years; being involved in intercellular communication and serving as reservoirs for biomarkers for tumors, they have a great potential for liquid biopsy development, possibly replacing many costly and invasive tissue biopsies. Here we propose, for the first time, the use of a Si/SiO2 interferometric, microarray platform for multiparametric intact EVs analysis combining label-free EVs mass quantitation and high sensitivity fluorescence based phenotyping. Label free interferometric measurement allows to quantify the amount of vesicles captured by printed antibodies while, on the same chip, EVs are also detected by fluorescence in a sandwich immunoassay. The proposed method simultaneously detects, quantify and phenotype intact EVs in a microarray format.