EVOLVE · Isolation and Analysis of Extracellular Vesicles using OptofLuidics for the eValuation of Microsatellite Instability in Endometrial Cancer

Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most common gynaecological cancer, and has an estimated incidence rise of more than 50% worldwide by 2040, mainly associated with increasing obesity prevalence. In 2018 alone, there were approximately 380,000 new cases and close to 90,000 deaths attributed to EC worldwide. Thus, there is a growing need for the development of better platforms for inexpensive, early stage EC diagnosis and treatments. Immunotherapy has shown a sharp increase in survival rate in various cancers, but only in a small percentage of treated patients. The lack of reliable biomarkers for the selection of this sub-group of patients is a great hindrance to its broader application in the clinical setting. However, microsatellite instability (MSI) has been shown to be a good candidate for immunotherapy selection. MSI evaluation requires genetic material from tumors, which can be found in extracellular vesicles released by EC cells to the bloodstream. Isolation and Analysis of Extracellular Vesicles using OptofLuidics for the eValuation of Microsatellite Instability in Endometrial Cancer (EVOLVE) is thus a project focused on the development of an integrated solution for the enrichment and analysis of extracellular vesicles from body fluids of endometrial cancer patients to assess microsatellite instability using lab-on-chip, microfluidics methods in conjunction with DNA biomarkers and surface-enhanced Raman scattering technology.