Abstract
It is widely accepted that assessing circular tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the plasma of cancer patients is a promising practice to evaluate somatic mutations from solid tumors noninvasively. Recently, it was reported that isolation of extracellular vesicles improves the detection of mutant DNA from plasma in metastatic patients; however, no consensus on the presence of dsDNA in exosomes has been reached yet. We analyzed small extracellular vesicle (sEV)-associated DNA of eleven metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients and compared the results obtained by microarray and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) to those reported on the ctDNA fraction. We detected the same mutations found in tissue biopsies and ctDNA in all samples but, unexpectedly, in one sample, we found a KRAS mutation that was not identified either in ctDNA or tissue biopsy. Furthermore, to assess the exact location of sEV-associated DNA (outside or inside the vesicle), we treated with DNase I sEVs isolated with three different methodologies. We found that the DNA inside the vesicles is only a small fraction of that surrounding the vesicles. Its amount seems to correlate with the total amount of circulating tumor DNA. The results obtained in our experimental setting suggest that integrating ctDNA and sEV-associated DNA in mCRC patient management could provide a complete real-time assessment of the cancer mutation status.