Exosome Isolation and Purification Services

With state-of-the-art instruments and professional training of technicians, Creative Biogene is proud to offer customized exosome isolation and purification services to meet global customers' needs for effective and safe delivery of therapeutically related mRNA.

Current strategies for exosome isolation and purification

Efficient exosome isolation is crucial for exosome-related investigations and downstream applications. According to the physiochemical properties of exosomes, currently, there are six major strategies developed for exosome isolation and purification, including ultrafiltration, ultracentrifugation, precipitation with polymers, size exclusion chromatography (SEC), immunoaffinity-based capture and integrated microfluidic separation technique. It is worth noting that the size distribution of exosomes varies significantly with different separation methods.

• Ultracentrifugation

As a gold standard exosome isolation method, ultracentrifugation can be divided into differential ultracentrifugation and isopycnic & moving-zone density-gradient ultracentrifugation. Among them, differential ultracentrifugation contributed to most pioneering exosome research while isopycnic & moving-zone density-gradient ultracentrifugation has enhanced the quality of isolated exosomes.

• Ultrafiltration

Ultrafiltration is based on an ultrafine Nano-membrane with different MWCO to achieve exosome separations by size. Ultrafiltration-based exosome isolation has a series of advantages over the classical ultracentrifugation method, such as shorter processing time and no requirement of special equipment. Therefore, it is an ideal alternative to ultracentrifugation and holds potential for industrial-scale exosome preparation.

Fig 1. Tangential flow filtration ensures highly efficient ultrafiltration. (Yang, D., et al, 2020)

• Size-exclusion chromatography (SEC)

Generally, size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) is based on a stationary phase consisting of porous resin particles, in which the solution passes through, molecules can be separated by size. With the introduction of various new and fine materials, SEC has been significantly improved and widely used in the high-resolution isolation of proteins, polymers, and other large molecules or aggregates of macromolecules. SEC-based method enables separation of exosomes with minimal structural damage. In the past decades, there have been developed various commercial SEC kits specifically for exosome separation.

• Polymer-induced precipitation

Unlike the above strategies based on size-dependent isolation, polymer-induced precipitation is another common strategy used for exosome isolation. The principle of polymer-based exosome precipitation is to create a hydrophobic micro-environment through the interaction of a highly hydrophilic polymer with the water molecules surrounding the exosomes, leading to exosome precipitation. Typically, the method is characterized by inexpensive, rapid, and high yield but is limited by contamination issues.

Fig 2. Schematic of polymer precipitation strategy. (Yang, D., et al, 2020)

• Immunoaffinity-based capture

Since there are some common proteins and receptors observed in most exosomes. It provides an opportunity to develop immunoaffinity-based exosome isolation, which is characterized by high-purity exosome isolation and purification with an easy procedure. In particular, the immunoaffinity-based method based on specific biomarkers represents an ideal platform, especially for separating subpopulations of exosomes with specific origins.

• Integrated microfluidic technique

Recent progress of microfluidics technologies provides novel exosome isolation as well as detection techniques, having the potential to overcome a range of the limitations of conventional methods, including low yield, low purity, requiring relatively long processing time, and so on. Remarkably, microfluidic devices contribute to the real-time analysis of exosomes. And rapid developments in microfabrication technology have facilitated the exploration of contact-free microfluidics-versatile tools for future exosome preparation.

Fig 3. Integrated microfluidic technique allows combined exosome isolation and analysis. (Yang, D., et al, 2020)

Service offering in Creative Biogene

Based on our experienced scientists and well-established technologies, we are able to provide a customized exosome isolation service that isolates exosomes from various biofluids. Notably, the choices of methods for exosome isolation and purification depend on the type of the sample. According to the pros and cons of each method and the sample types, we provide the most appropriate method to isolate and purify exosomes. Our service can meet the requirements of fast, efficient, and high purity exosome isolation and purification, which greatly promotes the application of exosomes as carriers for mRNA delivery. 

Creative Biogene promises to provide high-quality and low-cost exosome isolation and purification services tailored to customers' projects. If you are interested in our services, please contact us for more information. We are glad to cooperate with you!