Microvascular disease is a chronic disease which lacks efficient treatment because the disease mechanism is still unclear. Microvascular disease is the result of continued exposure of the small blood vessels in human body to high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes. It leads to the progressive loss of tissue capillaries, tissue-ischemia and fibrosis. As a consequence, the damaged vessels are a main cause of morbidity of the elderly, leading to end-organ diseases including heart failure, kidney failure, dementia, and beta cell failure in pancreas. Worldwide, approximately 80% of all diabetic patients develop retinopathy, 20% develop neuropathy, and 40% develop nephropathy. A novel approach is needed to study the pathology of microvascular disease.
In the last 10 years extracellular vesicles emerged as a new target in disease biomarkers and the keys to disease mechanisms. These nanosized vesicles are produced by all cells and represent an information rich matrix containing proteins, mRNA and metabolites of the parental cell. The exosomes can be found in all body fluids (blood, urine, tears) and that is why they are possible to access without invasive procedures. There is increasing evidence that detecting blood extracellular vesicles of epithelial and platelet origin may present very useful non-invasive signature for the onset of microvascular disease. The application of metabolomics methodologies and extracellular vesicles to the study of microvascular disease can increase our understanding of the pathophysiological processes involved and this should help to identify potential biomarkers to diagnose disease and develop new therapeutic strategies. Isolating and separating extracellular vesicles from blood, however, is very challenging. This project proposed a new way to resolve this problem.
