Research teams led by Kang Ji-yoon, Ph.D., of the Brain Convergence Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), and Professors Choi Nak-won and Bong Ki-wan of Korea University said on the 22nd that they jointly developed a new hydrogel technology that can easily isolate extracellular vesicles (EV) from various biofluids such as blood or urine without a separate pretreatment process.
Extracellular vesicles are tiny particles released by cells and are highly useful for early diagnosis and treatment research for diseases such as cancer and dementia. However, until now, isolating them required expensive equipment such as ultracentrifuges and complicated pretreatment processes, making it difficult to use in actual research or industrial settings.
To overcome these limitations, the researchers succeeded in creating a three-dimensional network structure with microscopic pores about 400 nanometers (nm) in size by freezing a hydrogel (a water-containing gel) material and then curing it with light. Thanks to this structure, only extracellular vesicles can be selectively filtered while allowing unnecessary components to pass through.
Using this technology, extracellular vesicles can be quickly and easily isolated from various biofluids, including blood, urine, saliva, milk, cell culture medium, and ascites from gastric cancer patients, without expensive equipment. The researchers said they expect the technology to be widely used for the early diagnosis of various diseases, including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and metabolic diseases, as well as for personalized treatment research.
Kang said, "This study solved at once the issues of complicated procedures and low efficiency in existing separation technologies," adding, "As a high-efficiency extracellular vesicle isolation technology that anyone can easily use, it will contribute to the advancement of Precision Medicine, new drug development, and the in vitro diagnostics industry."
Choi and Bong also said, "We presented a simple process that can obtain high-purity extracellular vesicles without complex equipment or skilled techniques," adding, "We expect it to be practically utilized across various bioindustry fields."
The study was published in the international journal "Nature Nanotechnology" on the 24th of last month.
References
Nat. Nanotechnol. (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-02011-1