Isolation and Characterization of Exosomes from Cell Culture Supernatants and Biological Fluids

The purpose of this unit is to give simple and reliable methods for purifying and characterizing exosomes. Cell culture supernatants (conditioned media; CM) contain several types of shed membrane fragments and vesicles; therefore, before performing any functional analysis, it is critical to ensure that the purified vesicles are exosomes and not other contaminating material. The first part of this unit describes the most common protocols used to purify exosomes from cell culture conditioned media or from physiological fluids, and the second part describes different methods for characterizing and assessing the purity of the isolated exosomes.

Clotilde Thery, Aled Clayton, Sebastian Amigorena, and Graça Raposo (2006) Isolation and Characterization of Exosomes from Cell Culture Supernatants and Biological Fluids. Current Protocols in Cell Biology 3.22.1-3.22.29.