The development of a sensitive and specific detection platform for exosomes is highly desirable as they are believed to transmit vital tumour-specific information (mRNAs, microRNAs, and proteins) to remote cells for secondary metastasis. Herein, we report a simple method for the real-time and label-free detection of clinically relevant exosomes using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor. Our method shows high specificity in detecting BT474 breast cancer cell–derived exosomes particularly from complex biological samples (e.g. exosome spiked in serum). This approach exhibits high sensitivity by detecting as low as 8280 exosomes/μL which may potentially be suitable for clinical analysis. We believe that this label-free and real-time method along with the high specificity and sensitivity may potentially be useful for clinical settings.

非常需要开发用于外泌体的灵敏且特异性的检测平台，因为据信它们可将重要的肿瘤特异性信息（mRNA，microRNA和蛋白质）传递至远端细胞以进行继发转移。本文中，我们报告了一种使用表面等离振子共振（SPR）生物传感器实时，无标签地检测临床相关外泌体的简单方法。我们的方法在检测BT474乳腺癌细胞衍生的外泌体（尤其是复杂生物样品（例如，掺入血清的外泌体））中显示出很高的特异性。通过检测低至8280外泌体/μL，该方法显示出高灵敏度，这可能适用于临床分析。我们认为，这种无标签，实时的方法以及高特异性和高灵敏度可能对临床环境很有用。