Microfluidic strategies for the isolation and profiling of exosomes

Exosomes are nanoscale extracellular vesicles carrying various cargos, which play a significant rule in intercellular communication, disease diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, heterogeneous/functional identity and clinical application of exosomes are hampered due to the lack of effective separation protocols from complex matrixes. The development of suitable platforms is indispensable for the manipulation and profiling of exosomes. Among those, microfluidic systems have been demonstrated to be among the most ideal strategies. The present review discussed the recent progresses of microfluidic-based protocols for the precise manipulation and effective separation of exosomes, including immune-affinity-based microchip, size-based micro-device, and multi-approaches integration microfluidic device. The combination of advanced techniques with nano/microfluidic chip for individual exosomes imaging or assay and the isolation of single exosome with microfluidics are presented. The opportunities and challenges of intelligent algorithms and machine learning in multi-dimensional profiling of individual exosomes are also highlighted.