EXOSOME DIAGNOSTICS AD THERAPEUTICS

Description:
Exosomes, a class of extracellular vesicles (EVs) of ~30-150 nm secreted from cells, have been emerging as a new paradigm for “liquid biopsy” diagnosis and therapeutic treatment of diseases, including cancer. Exosomes have been identified as a key mediator of many cellular processes and play important roles in disease pathology, progression and drug resistance. Exosomes are thus considered as a new modality of liquid biopsy of tumors which is extremely appealing in early diagnosis and precision medicine of cancer, as tissue biopsy is highly invasive, costly, and often infeasible to repeat. Exosomes are also arising as a new modality for drug delivery as they offer excellent biomaterials for tissue targeting and cargo transferring in vivo. As a new frontier across biology, clinical sciences, and pharmacology, however, progress in the field of EV research was stymied by a lack of tools for efficient isolation, molecular and functional analysis, and therapeutic engineering of exosomes. This workshop will give a general overview of and highlight the state-of-the-art progress in the development of technologies and methods for liquid biopsy diagnostics and therapeutic engineering towards clinical utilities, as well as the current EV study guidelines from EV society, for looking into new opportunities in early diagnosis and precision medicine of diseases including cancer.

Target Audience:
The workshop is intended for a broad audience, such as biologists, chemists, and engineers, and is particularly suited for graduate/undergraduate students, postdocs, research fellows and scientists with interest in exosome-based diagnostics and therapeutics.