This review highlights recent progress in exosome-based drug delivery for cancer therapy, covering exosome biogenesis, cargo selection mechanisms, and their application across multiple cancer types. As small extracellular vesicles, exosomes exhibit high biocompatibility and low immunogenicity, making them ideal drug delivery vehicles capable of efficiently targeting cancer cells, minimizing off-target damage and side effects. This review aims to explore the potential of exosomes in cancer therapy, with a focus on applications in chemotherapy, gene therapy, and immunomodulation. Additionally, challenges related to exosome production and standardization are analyzed, highlighting the importance of addressing these issues for their clinical application. In conclusion, exosome-based drug delivery systems offer promising potential for future cancer therapies. Further research should aim to enhance production efficiency and facilitate clinical translation, paving the way for innovative cancer treatment strategies.

Exosomes, nanoscale extracellular vesicles secreted by diverse cell types, have emerged as promising biomarkers for non-invasive tumor diagnostics, offering significant advantages over traditional methods. These vesicles, typically ranging from 30 to 150 nanometers in size, carry a diverse cargo of proteins, lipids, RNA, and microRNAs, which reflect the molecular alterations occurring within their parent cells. Notably, exosomes can be isolated from easily accessible biofluids such as blood, urine, and saliva, making them ideal candidates for liquid biopsy applications. This review explores the transformative potential of exosome-based biomarkers in the early detection and monitoring of cancers across diverse organ systems, including respiratory, digestive, hematological, neurological, endocrine malignancies and so on. Special emphasis is placed on their application in clinical trials, where exosome-based diagnostics have demonstrated promising results in detecting tumors at early stages and monitoring treatment responses, offering a less invasive and more accessible alternative to traditional biopsies. While recent advancements in exosome isolation and characterization technologies have significantly improved the sensitivity and specificity of these diagnostics, challenges such as biological heterogeneity, lack of standardization, and regulatory hurdles remain. Nevertheless, exosome-based diagnostics hold the promise of providing real-time, dynamic insights into tumor progression, enhancing personalized medicine. The integration of exosomes into clinical practice could revolutionize cancer diagnostics and therapy, improving patient outcomes. Further research and large-scale clinical validation are essential to fully realize the clinical potential of exosome-based biomarker applications in routine clinical settings.

Lysine lactylation (Kla), first described in 2019, is an emerging post-translational modification that converts lactate availability into changes in chroma

Introduction: Copper metabolism encompasses all cellular metabolic processes involving copper ions and plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of diseases, including cancer. Furthermore, copper is intricately involved in various processes related to nucleotide metabolism. However, a comprehensive analysis of copper metabolism in gliomas remains lacking despite its importance.Methods: To address this gap, glioma patients were stratified based on the expression levels of copper metabolism-related genes. By utilizing machine learning techniques, a novel copper metabolism-associated biomarker was developed. The potential of this biomarker in prognosis, mutation analysis, and predicting immunotherapy response efficiency in gliomas was systematically investigated.Results: Notably, IGFBP2, identified as a glioma tumor promoter, was found to promote disease progression and influence immunotherapy response. Additionally, glioma-derived IGFBP2 was observed to enhance microglial migration. High IGFBP2 expression in GBM cells facilitated macrophage interactions through the EGFR, CD63, ITGB1, and CD44 signaling pathways. Discussion: Overall, the copper metabolism-associated biomarker shows promising potential to enhance the clinical management of gliomas, offering valuable insights into disease prognosis and treatment strategies.

Early-stage diagnosis offers the greatest survival advantage in oncology, and yet conventional liquid-biopsy markers — circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) — depend on cell death or mechanical shedding and therefore appear late in disease progression. Exosomes, 40–160 nm lipid-bilayer vesicles secreted by viable cells, emerge earlier, outnumber CTCs by several orders of magnitude, and preserve multi-omic cargo that mirrors intratumor heterogeneity. Rapid advances in enabling technologies are driving continual breakthroughs in exosome-based liquid biopsy, laying a solid foundation for its accelerated translation into clinical practice. Key hurdles remain: standardizing exosome isolation, defining quantitative cut-offs that separate malignant from inflammatory EV surges, and building probabilistic multi-omic models to pinpoint tissue origin. Eliminating these obstacles could advance detection by months and shift care from late salvage to true early interception.