Extracellular Vesicles Analysis in the COVID-19 Era: Insights on Serum Inactivation Protocols Towards Downstream Isolation and Analysis

Abstract

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 crisis, the handling of biological samples from confirmed or suspected SARS-CoV-2 positive individuals demanded the use of inactivation protocols to ensure laboratory operators safety. While not standardized, these practices can be roughly divided in two categories, namely heat inactivation and solvent-detergent treatments. As such, these routine procedures should also apply to samples intended for Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) analysis. Assessing the impact of virus inactivating pre-treatments is therefore of pivotal importance, given the well-known variability introduced by different pre-analytical steps on downstream EVs isolation and analysis. Arguably, shared guidelines on inactivation protocols tailored to best address EVs-specific requirements will be needed among the EVs community, yet deep investigations in this direction haven’t been reported so far.