Teodora Cato - Secondment from IORS to VHIR

Teodora Cato from the Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia (IORS) spent 1 month at the end of 2025, at Vall d‘Hebron Research Institute, in Barcelona, Spain.

During her secondment, Teodora focused on the large-scale culture of MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell lines and the isolation of extracellular vesicles (EVs) for downstream proteomics and glycomics analyses. She gained hands-on experience in large-scale cell culture for EV-conditioned media collection, as well as multiple methodologies used in EV purification, including tangential flow filtration (TFF), size-exclusion chromatography (SEC), and density gradient ultracentrifugation (DGU). These methods enabled the preparation of high-purity EV samples, which were monitored using fluorescence-based detection and flow cytometry to confirm their enrichment and relative purity. In addition to cell line-derived EVs, she began optimizing the protocol for the isolation of EVs from human plasma, including spiking experiments to enable accurate quantification, and get a better idea of these complex biological samples.