Title : Sweat as new blood – The evs centric view
Abstract:
Sweat is a body fluid that is secreted continuously and imperceptibly by the body; analogous to the use of urine, saliva, and tears in clinical diagnoses, sweat could offer a medium for measuring, non-invasively, homeostasis in both healthy and disease conditions. Recent reports have started to point towards an extended role of the molecular constituents of sweat, such as urea, certain ions or salt concentration, raising possibilities that the skin may also offer a novel means of monitoring organ functions based on their secreted analytes or the response of skin cells to them. Cell secreted extracellular vesicles (EVs), carrying components like RNA, DNA, proteins, and metabolites, serve as candidates for developing non-invasive solutions for monitoring health and disease, owing to their capacity to cross various biological barriers, and become integrated into human sweat. However, the evidence for sweat associated EVs providing clinically-relevant information to use in health parameters monitoring and disease diagnostics remains to be determined. Developing cost-effective, easy, and reliable methodologies to investigate EVs molecular load and composition in the sweat may help to validate their relevance in clinical diagnosis. We used clinical grade dressing patches with the aim to accumulate, purify and characterize sweat EVs from healthy and diseased participants who were recruited to take part in two distinct pilot studies. Data revealed that sweat EVs can be purified using routinely used clinical patches, setting the foundations for larger-scale clinical cohort work. Furthermore, the metabolites identified in sweat EVs also offer a realistic means to identify relevant biomarkers, which are associated with sport performance and disease. Our studies thus provide proof of concept towards novel methodologies that will focus on the use of the sweat EVs and their metabolites as non-invasive approaches to monitor wellbeing and changes in diseases and to further develop new generations of wearable sensors.
Audience Take Away Notes:
- Clinical patches can be used for larger- scale clinical cohort-studies to collect sweat for disease diagnosis and health monitoring non- invasively and without requiring any physical activity from healthy or diseased subjects
- Our technology offers an easy and cost-effective approach that can be used in basic research institutes, clinics, but also in cosmetic research market for testing new cosmetic products on the skin via monitoring biomarkers
- Owing to their distinct properties, EVs are widely studied, and numerous reports suggest that EVs may offer the foundation for identifying the molecular patterns of frequently occurring diseases. For this, researchers from different scientific background can use our methodology for exploring the potential of EVs in association with their focus, but also for teaching purposes including technician, nurses, students from basic sciences or medical faculties.
- It provides a practical solution to a problem that could simplify or make a designer’s job more efficient
- It improves the accuracy of a design, or provide new information to assist in a design problem
