(Press-News.org)
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have rapidly emerged as one of the most promising frontiers in modern biology. These nano-sized messengers mediate communication between cells, tissues, and organs, influencing processes from immune signaling to cancer progression. Their growing diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic relevance has accelerated research worldwide. Yet one major limitation persists: the absence of efficient, scalable, and equipment-independent EV isolation methods. Existing techniques, including ultracentrifugation and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC), remain labor-intensive, instrumentation-heavy, and unsuitable for processing large-volume biofluids.
To address this gap, a team led by Professor Nakwon Choi from Korea University developed a practical, scalable EV-isolation platform that operates without preprocessing steps or specialized equipment. Their findings, published in Nature Nanotechnology on September 24, 2025, introduce meso–macroporous hydrogels engineered with pores large enough to admit EVs while maintaining structural stability.
As Prof. Choi explains, “We engineered meso–macroporous PEGDA hydrogel particles with pores approximately 400 nm in diameter using a technique called cryo-photocrosslinking. In this process, frozen hydrogel precursor solutions possess ice crystals that act as porogens, creating EV-permeable pores upon crosslinking of polymer chains.” EVs are captured through charge-selective interactions in the presence of high-salt (NaCl) and released upon the removal of the salt. This enables direct isolation from blood, plasma, urine, saliva, ascites, milk, and cell culture media—without serial filtration or ultracentrifugation. The system is highly scalable, from microlitres to litre-scale volumes, and preserves EVs in situ via freeze-drying. By adjusting freezing conditions, the team can also enrich specific EV subpopulations.
The results were striking. Hydrogel-based isolation produced up to 1,539-fold higher EV yield from milk compared to ultracentrifugation and shortened processing time by nearly six-fold, all without preprocessing. The isolated EVs retained structural and functional integrity, promoting fibroblast and keratinocyte proliferation and providing protection against oxidative stress. Diagnostic utility was demonstrated through urinary EV microRNA profiling for prostate cancer detection. EVs stored in freeze-dried hydrogels remained stable for up to 60 days without cold-chain requirements, and the hydrogel particles were cost-effective and reusable, enhancing viability for research and industrial use.
The platform offers numerous advantages: high yield and purity, rapid processing, scalability, broad biofluid compatibility, long-term preservation, and customisable enrichment. Therapeutically, milk-derived EVs show promise for wound healing, tissue regeneration, and cosmeceutical applications. Diagnostically, rapid EV isolation from urine, saliva, or blood supports non-invasive biomarker discovery. Industrially, scalability and ambient-temperature stability enable large-scale EV production and distribution, including in resource-limited settings.
Reflecting on the study, Prof. Choi, Prof. Bong, and Dr. Kang note, “Our meso–macroporous hydrogel holds promise for translating EV research from the lab to clinical and industrial settings. It is cost-effective, reusable, and independent of specialized equipment, allowing users to recover and preserve EVs on demand, even across long distances without a cold chain. We envision this technology as a versatile platform to advance EV studies, from fundamental research to applications in diagnostics, prognosis, and therapeutics.”
In summary, the meso–macroporous PEGDA hydrogel represents a major advance in EV biotechnology, enabling direct, scalable, and equipment-free EV isolation from diverse biofluids. With high performance and practical versatility, it supports laboratory, clinical, and industrial progress and accelerates the translation of EV science into real-world diagnostic and therapeutic innovations.
***
About Korea University College of Medicine
Korea University College of Medicine is the medical school of Korea University. It is located in Seoul, South Korea. As one of the oldest medical schools in South Korea, it has been historically regarded as one of the country's top medical schools. The school was founded as Chosun Women's Medical Training Institute in 1928 by Rosetta Sherwood Hall. The institute was subsequently renamed several times and ultimately merged with Korea University to become Korea University College of Medicine. So far, the school has produced over 7,000 graduates, most of whom are working as prominent physicians and public health advocates worldwide.
Website: https://medicine.korea.ac.kr/en/index.do
About Professor Nakwon Choi
Prof. Nakwon Choi is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Convergence Medicine at College of Medicine, Korea University. His group is developing enabling technology platforms to bridge the gap between engineering and biomedical sciences, including hydrogel-based assays and microphysiological systems.
END
Nicotine addiction remains one of the most persistent public health challenges worldwide, driven by changes in the brain that reinforce repeated use and make quitting extremely difficult. For decades, scientists have focused primarily on neurons to explain how these changes occur. But growing evidence suggests that other brain cells may play a far more active role in shaping addictive behavior than previously thought.
Building on this shift in understanding, a team of researchers led by Professor Eun Sang Choe from the Department of Biological Sciences, Pusan National ...
A study led by researchers at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute advances one of the most significant milestones in breast cancer treatment, making immunotherapy effective against the most common tumor type, estrogen receptor-positive or luminal breast cancer. This subtype accounts for 70% of breast cancer cases, and despite effective treatments, it causes the highest mortality in total cases. Additionally, immunotherapy is not effective or approved because it shows no immune system response in these tumors, ...
CHICAGO – Long-term exposure to common air pollutants is associated with more advanced coronary artery disease—with notable differences between women and men—according to a large-scale study of more than 11,000 adults being presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
The findings show that even levels of pollution below or near regulatory standards and typical urban exposures are associated with early signs of heart disease—often before symptoms appear—and underscore the importance of improving air quality to reduce cardiovascular ...
Kyoto, Japan -- "Why are we here?" is humanity's most fundamental and persistent question. Tracing the origins of the elements is a direct attempt to answer this at its deepest level. We know many elements are created inside stars and supernovae, which then cast them out into the universe, yet the origins of some key elements has remained a mystery.
Chlorine and potassium, both odd-Z elements -- possessing an odd number of protons -- are essential to life and planet formation. According to current theoretical models, stars ...
The choreographed movements that cells perform to form complex biological shapes, like our hands, have fascinated scientists for centuries. Now, researchers at EMBL Barcelona have launched LimbNET, an open-access online platform that allows scientists to directly choreograph this dance by computationally simulating how genes guide these intricate growth processes. Their work has recently been published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology.
LimbNET is much more than a simple data repository. It is a new type of platform allowing ...
A research team led by Ryo Shimano of the University of Tokyo has successfully visualized two distinct mechanisms through which up and down spins, inherent properties of electrons, switch in an antiferromagnet, a material in which spin alignments cancel each other out. One of the visualized mechanisms provides a working principle for developing ultrafast, non-volatile magnetic memory and logic devices, which could be much faster than today’s technologies. The findings are published in the journal Nature Materials.
Paper slips with holes, small metal rods, vacuum tubes, and transistors: these are technologies that have ...
Growing energy demand means the U.S. will almost certainly have to expand its electricity grid in coming years. What’s the best way to do this? A new study by MIT researchers examines legislation introduced in Congress and identifies relative tradeoffs involving reliability, cost, and emissions, depending on the proposed approach.
The researchers evaluated two policy approaches to expanding the U.S. electricity grid: One would concentrate on regions with more renewable energy sources, and the other would create more interconnections across the country. For instance, some of the best untapped wind-power resources in the U.S. lie ...
A recently published article in the journal BioScience has revealed a surprising opportunity for conserving threatened species: sports teams and their branding.
The research, led by Dr. Ugo Arbieu of Université Paris-Saclay in France, analyzed 727 sporting organizations across 50 countries and 10 team sports. The authors found that "threatened species and species with a declining population trend are more represented than other species, with differences across regions."
Arbieu and colleagues explain that "given the ongoing global biodiversity crisis and the importance of sport in modern societies, representations ...
Media Contact:
John Dudley
(814) 490-3290 (cell)
jjdudley@usf.edu
TAMPA, Fla. (Dec. 2, 2025) – A new study led by researchers at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science has found that certain populations of the seaweed sargassum have experienced a significant decline over the past decade, even as increased abundance of sargassum in the tropical Atlantic has caused large mats of the seaweed to inundate beaches across the Caribbean and Gulf regions.
The abundance of sargassum in the Atlantic’s ...
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is invaluable in the medical world. But despite all the good it does, there is room for improvement. One way to enhance the sensitivity of MRI is called dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), where target molecules for imaging are modified so they form clearer images when scanned with an MRI machine. But this technique requires some special crystalline materials mixed with polarizing agents which are difficult to create. For the first time, researchers including those from the University of Tokyo demonstrate the use of molecules called fullerenes as polarizing agents. Their new method can make DNP targets sufficient to yield far greater clarity when ...
