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Extracellular vesicles in cancer progression

Guest Editors:

Orazio Fortunato, PhD: Tumor Genomic Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Italy
Irina Matei, PhD: Weill Cornell Medicine, USA
Chunlin Ou, PhD: Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, China

This collection is no longer accepting submissions.


BMC Cancer has published this Collection on the dynamic interaction between cancer cells and the tumour microenvironment mediated by the bi-directional release and uptake of extracellular vesicles.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Orazio Fortunato, PhD: Tumor Genomic Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Italy

Orazio Fortunato, PhD, Tumor Genomic Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan. Due to his expertise in biomarkers, he is involved directly in the development and analyses of circulating extracellular vesicles as biomarkers in plasma of lung cancer patients. He had given a major contribution to the study of miRNAs, particularly focusing on those miRNAs de-regulated in lung tumors and plasma samples. Recently, his research is focused on the functional role of extracellular vesicles in the development and progression of lung cancer. His current interest also includes the identification of extracellular vesicles as biomarkers of response to immunotherapy in cancer patients.


Irina Matei, PhD: Weill Cornell Medicine, USA
Irina Matei is an Assistant Professor of Immunology Research for Weill Cornell Medicine. She has expertise in cancer metastasis and exosome biology and combines innovative basic tumor biology research with translational studies, relating basic discoveries to advances in patient treatments. Her current research focuses on the crosstalk between tumor cells and the local and distant tumor microenvironment via exosomes. Specifically, she is interested in deciphering the role of exosomes in mediating the crosstalk within and with the immune system in normal physiology, cancer and autoimmunity. Dr. Matei’s current work is focused on the mechanisms through which exosomes coax the immune system to contribute to malignant progression.


Chunlin Ou, PhD: Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, China

Chunlin Ou is a Professor for Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, working for the department of Pathology. His researches focus on the molecular targeted therapy for human cancers, which mainly involve: the role of Hippo/YAP signaling pathway in targeted therapy of cancers; exploring the regulatory mechanism of extracellular vesicles-derived non-coding RNAs in cancers; searching novel biomarkers and drug targets for the early diagnosis and therapy of cancers; and clinical application of mRNA vaccine in cancers. Professor Ou is also an Editorial Board member of BMC Cancer.





About the collection

Over the last few decades it has become clear that the cross-talk between neoplastic cells and the tumour microenvironment, comprising resident and infiltrating host cells, extracellular matrix proteins and secreted factors, plays a key role in tumour progression and therapeutic resistance. The dynamic interaction between cancer cells and the tumour microenvironment can be mediated by the bi-directional release and uptake of extracellular vesicles. Defined as lipid bilayer enclosed vesicles found in several biological fluids, extracellular vesicles are currently investigated for their ability to carry and deliver, at both short and long distances, several bioactive molecules, including nucleic acids, lipids and membrane-bound and cytosolic proteins, which could potentially influence many aspects of cancer progression. 

  • In recognition of the growing field of research, BMC Cancer have launched this collection to bring together research on:
  • The role of extracellular vesicles in modulating the behaviour of resident and host cells in the tumour microenvironment.
  • The role of circulating extracellular vesicles in setting up the pre-metastatic niche
  • The role of extracellular vesicles in therapeutic resistance.
  • Investigating the cargos of cancer-related extracellular vesicles as potential diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers.
  • Changes in the mechanisms of extracellular vesicles biogenesis, release and uptake in cancer.
  • The use of extracellular vesicles as delivery vehicles for therapeutics.
  • The role of extracellular vesicles as therapeutic targets.
  • Advances in the isolation and characterisation of cancer-related extracellular vesicles.

  1. Liquid biopsy can detect circulating cancer cells or tumor cell-derived DNA at various stages of cancer. The fluid from these biopsies contains extracellular vesicles (EVs), such as apoptotic bodies, microvesi...

    Authors: Mickensone Andre, Allen Caobi, Jana S. Miles, Arti Vashist, Marco A. Ruiz and Andrea D. Raymond
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2024 24:322
    Content type: Review Published on:

  2. Predicting tumor responses to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is critical for evaluating prognosis and designing treatment strategies for patients with breast cancer; however, there are no reliable biomarkers t...

    Authors: Min Woo Kim, Hyojung Lee, Suji Lee, Sol Moon, Young Kim, Joon Ye Kim, Seung Il Kim and Jee Ye Kim
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2024 24:185
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the malignant tumors with the highest mortality worldwide. Our previous studies have revealed that LINC00691 is up-regulated in serum of GC patients as a novel potential biomarker...

    Authors: Bin Xia, Xiuyu Gu, Tingting Xu, Meina Yan, Lan Huang, Chun Jiang, Meifen Li, Guanghua Zhai, Guoping Zhang, Jian Wu, Yu Zhou, Chunrong Sun and Wei Liang
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:928
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. The optimal treatment for multiple brain metastases has been recently controversially discussed.This study was aimed to explore the feasibility of Hippocampus-Avoidance Whole-Brain Radiotherapy plus a simultan...

    Authors: Xiaoliang Wang, Jinping Chen, Zhanquan Lei, Haihong Chen, Yufang Zhang, Gang Liu, Shaomin Li, Zhenhua Zheng and Hui Wang
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:796
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  5. Cancer cells release heterogeneous populations of extracellular vesicles (EVs) that transmit aggressive phenotypic traits to recipient cells. We aimed to establish if the heterogenous EVs population or a sub-p...

    Authors: Niamh McNamee, Mariadelva Catalano, Anindya Mukhopadhya and Lorraine O’Driscoll
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:654
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Recent reports have demonstrated that the entire mitochondrial genome can be secreted in extracellular vesicles (EVs), but the biological attributes of this cell-free mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) remain insuffici...

    Authors: Tonje Bjørnetrø, Paula A. Bousquet, Kathrine Røe Redalen, Anne-Marie Siebke Trøseid, Torben Lüders, Espen Stang, Adriana M. Sanabria, Christin Johansen, Anniken Jørlo Fuglestad, Christian Kersten, Sebastian Meltzer and Anne Hansen Ree
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:650
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  7. Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) have great potential as new biomarkers in liquid biopsy. However, due to the limitations of sEVs extraction and component analysis procedures, further clinical applications ...

    Authors: Yifan Sun, Miao Li, Xiaoshan Zhang, Dongjie Xu, Jie Wu, Xinrui Gu, Adeel Khan, Han Shen and Zhiyang Li
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:614
    Content type: Research Published on:

  8. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) have significant tumor regulatory functions, and CAFs-derived exosomes (CAFs-Exo) released from CAFs play an important role in the progression of oral squamous cell carcino...

    Authors: Wei-Zhou Wang, Xue Cao, Li Bian, Yue Gao, Ming Yu, Yi-Ting Li, Jian-Guo Xu, Yang-Hao Wang, He-Feng Yang, Ding-Yun You and Yong-Wen He
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:591
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of research articles, data notes, study protocols, and database articles. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, SNAPP. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Extracellular vesicles in cancer progression" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.