Extracellular Vesicles and Their Potential Use in Monitoring Cancer Progression and Therapy: The Contribution of Proteomics

Table 1

Overview of the main characteristics of different types of extracellular membranous vesicles.

	Exo	MVs	ABs	LOs
Size (diameter)	30-100 nm [19]	100-1000 nm [3, 19, 30]	50-500 nm [32]	1-10 μm [9, 33]
Flotation density	1.10-1.21 g/mL	NA	1.16-1.28 g/mL	NA
Morphology	“cup-shaped”	Various shapes	Heterogeneous [3, 32]	Large size - Various shapes
Lipid composition	Cholesterol, ceramide, sphingomyelin, low phosphatidylserine exposure, lipid rafts	High phosphatidylserine exposure, cholesterol [20, 28, 34]	High phosphatidylserine exposure	High phosphatidylserine exposure, cholesterol
Protein markers	Alix, CD63, CD9, CD81 [17, 35]	Selectins, integrins, CD40, MMP	Histones [32]	ARF6, CK18,; GAPDH, MMP, oncogenic proteins complexes [31, 33, 36]
Site of origin	MVEs [1] or MVBs [17]	Plasma membrane	-	Plasma membrane
Mode of extracellular release	Exocytosis of MVEs [23]	Budding/blebbing of the plasma membrane [28]	Cell shrinkage and death	Budding from the plasma membrane [9, 33]
Composition	Proteins, miRNA, mRNA	Proteins, miRNA, mRNA [8]	Proteins, DNA [32], miRNA, RNA [8]	Proteins, miRNA, mRNA, DNA [36, 37]

MVs, microvesicles; ABs, apoptotic blebs; LOs, large oncosomes; MVEs, multivesicular endosomes; MVBs, multivesicular bodies; MMP, metalloproteinases; NA, not known.