Congratulations to Silvia Picciolini!

Her work on the detection of brain derived exosomes by SPRi technology has been accepted by Analytical Chemistry and is now available online.

This work is the result of a great team work within LABION and of the collaboration with Prof. Masserini of the University of Milano-Bicocca. Silvia has designed a surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) assay that, taking advantage of the fact that exosome size perfectly fits within the surface plasmon wave depth, allows the detection of multiple exosome subpopulations of neural origin directly in blood. By the use of an array of antibodies, exosomes derived from neurons and oligodendrocytes were isolated and detected with good sensitivity. We have been able to demonstrate that brain derived exosomes exhibit a variable abundance of general markers like CD81 according to their cellular origin. These results confirm the extreme variability of exosome composition and demonstrate how SPRi can provide an effective tool for their characterization. Besides, our work paves the road toward more precise clinical studies on the use of exosomes as potential biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases.