Abstract
Cancer cells communicate with each other via exosomes in the tumor microenvironment. However, measuring trace amounts of proteins in exosomes is difficult, and thus the cancer stemness-promoting mechanisms of exosomal proteins have not been elucidated. In the present study, we attempted to quantify trace amounts of 78-kDa glucose-regulated protein (GRP78), which is involved in cancer progression, in exosomes released from cultured gastric cancer cells using an ultrasensitive ELISA combined with thio-NAD cycling. We also evaluated the cancer stemness-promoting effects by the application of high-GRP78-containing exosomes to cultured gastric cancer cells. The ultrasensitive ELISA enabled the detection of GRP78 at a limit of detection of 0.16 pg/mL. The stemness of cancer cultured cells incubated with high-GRP78-containing exosomes obtained from GRP78-overexpressed cells was increased on the basis of both an MTT assay and a wound healing assay. Our results demonstrated that the ultrasensitive ELISA has strong potential to measure trace amounts of proteins in exosomes. Further, exosomes with a high concentration of GRP78 promote the cancer stemness of surrounding cells. The technique for quantifying proteins in exosomes described here will advance our understanding of cancer stemness progression via exosomes.