|
| Method | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|
| Differential ultracentrifugation | Commonly used method allowing comparison between studies [17, 19, 38]
| Slow and laborious technique
Includes contaminants without additional steps
EVs may aggregate [6, 10, 39]
Pellet can be difficult to resuspend [10] |
| Density gradient ultracentrifugation | Commonly used method allowing comparison between studies
Products of higher purity than differential ultracentrifugation [10, 19, 40] | Slow and laborious technique [10, 41]
Some media, for example, sucrose, may interfere with EVs function [6]
|
| Ultrafiltration | Concentrates large volumes
Cleans up the samples before other analyses [13, 40, 42] | Potential losses under high pressure and unspecific membrane adsorption [6] |
| Immunoaffinity capture | Highly pure product
Rapid
Used for immunophenotyping EV s [10, 20, 40] | Costly
Low yield
Need to remove EVs from antibodies which may mask what required for target selection or effect [10, 16] |
| Precipitation or “salting out” | Does not require specialized equipment
Rapid [10, 40] | Relatively impure products
Excess of salt and polymer can interfere with subsequent analyses [6, 16] |
Size exclusion chromatography
| Good separation [10, 16, 40] | Need to concentrate the samples [11]
|
| Microfluidics techniques | Rapid
Ideal for industrial manufacture [10, 40] | Shear stress can damage EVs structure [10] |
|
