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carriers of cancer cell-specific protein and nucleic acid contents. Exo are viewed as promising tools for
cancer diagnosis and therapy. We highlight how current research is exploiting both these utilities and the
strategies used to enhance the potential of Exo in the treatment of cancer. If understood in more detail,
the identification of cancer-specific Exo would become vital in early diagnosis and assessing response to
therapeutic intervention(s) when monitoring cancer progression and its treatment. The unique stability,
biocompatibility, homing ability and low immunogenicity of Exo, can also be exploited as a delivery system
for therapeutic agents since Exo can also be loaded with a variety of molecules. As our understanding of
Exo biology and the profiling of their protein and RNA cargoes as potential biomarkers is expanded, the
ability to engineer content of Exo opens new possibilities for their use as selective carriers of therapeutic
miRNAs and/or drug carriers to target tumour cells. It is foreseeable that the next years will witness the
challenging clinical applications of Exo in cancer diagnosis and therapeutics.

DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
Made substantial contributions to the conception and design of this study and wrote the manuscript:
Panfoli I
Revised this work substantially: Bruschi M

Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship
None.

Conflicts of interest
All authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.

Consent for publication
Not applicable.

Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020.

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