What are we looking at? Extracellular vesicles, lipoproteins, or both?

Abstract

Unawareness (EVs) and lipoproteins or neglecting coisolate that extracellular when using a vesicles traditional 1-step physical-based purification method to isolate one of these entities from plasma is a major issue. This issue ultimately leads to wrong conclusions about the composition and biological functions of these bionanoparticles. Here, I highlight the biophysical similarities between EVs and lipoproteins and their different abundances in plasma that result in the unintentional coisolation of these 2 different entities. Concerns related to nonquantitative measures of mass spectrometry (MS) and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)–based data and the dynamics of certain apolipoproteins are also stressed because these facets, like the coisolation issue, may challenge our understanding of what we are actually looking at when we are studying apparently purified EV or lipoprotein samples.