Light-induced extracellular vesicle and particle adsorption.

The role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) and particles (EPs/EVPs) in human health and disease has garnered considerable attention over the past two decades. However, while several types of EVPs are known to interact dynamically with the extracellular matrix and there is great potential value in producing high-fidelity EVP micropatterns, there are currently no label-free, scalable and tunable platform technologies with this capability. We introduce light-induced extracellular vesicle and particle adsorption (LEVA) as a powerful solution to study surface-bound EVPs. The versatility of LEVA is demonstrated using GFP-EV standards, EVs from conventional and bioreactor cultures, DiFi exomeres and Escherichia coli EVs, with the resulting patterns used for single-EV fluorescence imaging, cell migration on migrasome-mimetic trails and bacterial EV-mediated neutrophil swarming. LEVA will rapidly advance our understanding of extracellular matrix protein- and surface-bound EVPs and should encourage researchers from many disciplines to create new biomimetic, immunoengineering and other assays.