Extracellular biology and nanodiagnostics for occupational medicine

L. Paolini,^1,2 G. De Palma,¹ P. Bergese^2,3 | Dipartimento di Specialità Medico Chirurgiche, Scienze Radiologiche e Sanità Pubblica (DSMC), Università degli Studi di Brescia; ²Consorzio Interuniversitario per lo Sviluppo dei Sistemi a Grande Interfase (CSGI), Firenze; ³Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare e Traslazionale (DMMT), Università degli Studi di Brescia, Italy

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are biogenic particles secreted by all cell types, ranging in size from 30 to 500 nm. They play a fundamental role in cell-cell communication and modulate various biological processes, both in physiological and pathological conditions, through the transport of proteins, lipids, metabolites, nucleic acids such as miRNAs and DNA, which reflect the content of the cell of origin (1).
Thanks to their unique structural and compositional characteristics, they have the potential to become the next generation of diagnostic platforms. Our laboratory has begun to study EVs derived from different biological matrices (serum, plasma, skeletal muscle tissue) with an innovative multidisciplinary approach, combining biological and biochemical analyses with the use of nanotechnologies, which allow us to investigate the typical properties of colloidal solutions such as concentration, size, rigidity, and stability, usually applied to nanoparticles of synthetic origin (2).
This has made it possible to highlight specific characteristics of various pathological conditions such as coagulation disorders (3), neurodegenerative diseases (4), and blood cancers (5).
The applications in occupational medicine are numerous and still few in number, with the prospect of improving knowledge of the toxicokinetics and toxicodynamics of pollutants in order to arrive at new biomarkers of exposure and effect.