Abstract
Platinum-resistant high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) is invariably a fatal disease. A central goal of ovarian cancer research is therefore to develop new strategies to overcome platinum resistance. Treatment is thus moving towards personalized therapy. However, validated molecular biomarkers that predict patients' risk of developing platinum resistance are still lacking. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are promising candidate biomarkers. EpCAM-specific EVs are largely unexplored biomarkers for predicting chemoresistance. Using transmission electron microscopy, nanoparticle tracking analysis and flow cytometry, we compared the characteristics of EVs released from a cell line derived from a clinically confirmed cisplatin-resistant patient (OAW28) and EVs released from two cell lines from tumors sensitive to platinum-based chemotherapy (PEO1 and OAW42). We demonstrated that EVs released from the HGSOC cell line of chemoresistant patients exhibited greater size heterogeneity, a larger proportion of medium/large (>200 nm) Evs and a higher number of released EpCAM-positive EVs of different sizes, although the expression of EpCAM was predominant in EVs larger than 400 nm. We also found a strong positive correlation between the concentration of EpCAM-positive EVs and the expression of cellular EpCAM. These results may contribute to the prediction of platinum resistance in the future, although they should first be validated in clinical samples.