About | EXPAND-EV

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are emerging as powerful tools in precision medicine, offering valuable insights into disease progression, enabling early detection, and supporting personalized treatment approaches. They also hold great promise as drug delivery systems, improving therapeutic outcomes. However, their clinical potential remains largely untapped due to technological limitations and the lack of standardized purification methods.

EXPAND-EV is dedicated to overcoming these barriers by developing an innovative, scalable, and cost-effective EV purification system. Leveraging single-domain antibody affinity technology (nanobodies, Nbs), this system will enable highly efficient and reproducible EV isolation for both diagnostic and therapeutic use. By addressing key limitations in EV purification, EXPAND-EV aims to accelerate their integration into precision medicine, particularly in cancer diagnostics and treatment.

EXPAND-EV is structured around two primary research areas:

Advancing Liquid Biopsy for Cancer Diagnosis

The project will validate the EV purification system in clinical laboratories using samples from breast, liver, and lung cancer patients. By analyzing the proteomic, glycomic, and transcriptomic signatures of EVs, researchers will identify new biomarker panels. These biomarkers will facilitate early cancer detection, non-invasive prognosis, and the development of personalized therapeutic strategies.

Developing Plant-Derived EVs for Drug Delivery

EXPAND-EV is pioneering the use of edible plant-derived EVs (PDEVs) as natural carriers for therapeutic small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules. The project will establish Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)-compliant protocols to produce these PDEVs and evaluate their safety and efficacy in preclinical cancer models. This research has the potential to create a non-invasive, sustainable, and effective drug delivery platform.

Knowledge Exchange and Networking in EXPAND-EV

Work packages

In order to achieve the successful complementation of EXPAND-EV objectives,

the work-plan is wisely organized and split into the following distinct work packages (WPs):

Work package WP1 – Project Management, dissemination, public engagement and exploitation

Objectives: 1) Supervision of the scientific progress towards the network's planned objectives; 2) Day-to-day financial and administrative management including secondments, reports, communication between partners and the EC; 3) Logistical support and follow-up of consortium meetings and related activities; 4) Communication and dissemination of project knowledge and results; 6) Supporting exploitation of results by partners towards their networks and beyond; 7)Promotion of gender balance in the consortium’s research teams.
Work package WP2 – Training and secondment

Objectives: 1) Planning and coordination of network-wide training events; 2) Planning and coordination of local training events; 3) Planning and coordination of webinars; 4) Planning and coordination of individual and shared secondments.
Work package WP3 – Acquisition and specification of extracellular vesicles (EVs) from biological sources

Objectives 1)Acquisition and proteomic analysis of EVs from patients with BC, LC and HC and from healthy donors; 2)Acquisition and proteomic analysis of EVs produced by normal or immortalized breast, and liver cell lines; 3) Acquisition and proteomic analysis of EVs produced by cell lines of BC, HC, and LC to select the cell lines that best fit pathological phenotype in patients; 4) Acquisition and analysis of plant EVs from various edible sources such as ginger, grape, lemon, grapefruit etc to select the source with compromised in vitro immunogenicity
Work package WP4 – Nanobodies (Nbs, recombinant variable domains of heavy-chain-only antibodies) against EVs: selection, optimization and production

Objectives: Selection, and validation of the Nbs for EV purification unit
Work package WP5 – Components and system integration for different scale

Objectives: 1) Development of novel EVs purification system based on NbS and solid carrier; 2) Validation of developed unit on different biological samples; 3) Optimising protocols for system application in large-scale EVs production 4) Optimising protocols for system application in high-throughput EVs isolation.
Work package WP6 – Prototype validation in clinical laboratory settings

Objectives: 1) Validation of the PROTOTYPE purification system for EVs based stratification of BC, LC and HC management
Work package WP7 – Prototype validation for GMP compliant manufacturing of EV based drug delivery system

Objectives 1)Validation of the PROTOTYPE purification system for isolation of PDEVs; 2) Development of efficient drug loading strategy to PDEVs; 3) Determination of the in vitro effect of drug-loaded PDEVs on the selected BC, HC and LC, by monitoring cell viability 4) Determination of the in vivo effect of drug-loaded PDEVs on orthotopic BC xenograft model.