DATE: November 7, 2018
TIME: 7:00AM PDT

Exosomes have been shown to have significant roles in cancer including disease progression acting in the tumor micro-environment, metastasis acting in the peripheral circulation and immune suppression acting in both areas. We have sought to translate information gathered from exosomes isolated from cancer cell culture supernatant, to those isolated from pancreatic cancer plasma and cyst fluid obtained by endoscopy. Biomarker discovery is of the utmost importance for this deadly form of cancer. Traditional flow cytometers generally struggle to resolve individual exosomes.  We have previously demonstrated that the use of ultra-filtered sheath fluid (0.025 um pore size) significantly increases the resolution of exosomes. We use the Invitrogen Attune NxT Flow Cytometer to analyze individual exosomes for the expression of a variety of surface markers using multi-color staining.

Learning objectives:

• Different exosome isolation methods 
• Best practices for the flow cytometric analysis of exosomes 
• Surface marker analysis of exosomes