Optimization of the isolation of extracellular vesicles via dielectrophoresis: A preliminary analysis

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs); 30 nm to 1 micrometer in size; has gained its attention as their role as biomarkers and communicator from one cell to another. The importance of early detection for diseases is highly integral and key to patient's probability of survival. The drawback of many existing methods is that it can be time consuming and prone to falsenegative results due to limitation of the circumstances. This research is aiming to address the disease detection technology limitation by using dielectrophoresis microelectrode principle to manipulate the properties of EVs. The important feature of dielectrophoresis is that this can be used as means to manipulate, transport and separate different types of particles, which one of them is EVs. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) has been used in this work to characterize the EVs. MATLAB provides the dielectrophoresis technique characterization for manipulation and separation of EVs from their medium. The EVs on the microelectrode has been supplied with 20 V peak-to-peak (Vpp) for frequency in the range of 100 kHz to 10 Mhz to observe the DEP response. Figure 6 shows the movement of EVs at 100 kHz from the region of interest (ROI) to on top of the microelectrode which represents positive dielectrophoresis, PDEP. The experimental testing shows its ability for this method to manipulate the EVs based on their physical characteristics and dielectric properties. Hence, the development of EVs manipulation using dielectrophoresis microelectrode technique offers a faster detection or diagnosis in the medical science field.