Recent electrokinetic strategies for isolation, enrichment and separation of extracellular vesicles

Abstract Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a family of cell-derived membrane vesicles that are present in almost all body fluids. EVs have gained significant interest over the last decades as mediators of key functions in numerous patho-physiological condition (clearance, signalling, trophic support, cargo delivery) and as potential prognostic or diagnostic biomarkers. The endogenous delivery capacities of these nanometric entities also hold a high potential as engineered drug nanocarriers for clinical and pharmaceutical applications, especially for targeted therapies. Nevertheless, knowledge about the features of individual EVs (composition, physical and chemical characteristics) is still at the infancy because of the technical challenges to purify and analyze the various subpopulations of EVs. In this review, a comprehensive overview of electrokinetically driven methods for isolation, enrichment and characterization of EVs is presented. This review covers new trends of analytical science (over 7 years up till 2020), serving for high-quality EVs production, isolation, analysis and quality control, which are expected to provide powerful and complementary alternatives to the conventional and recently emerged approaches such as microfluidics. We critically discuss here the pros and cons of the different instrumental and methodological developments for electrokinetic strategies applied to EVs.