Proteomic analysis of extracellular vesicles derived from Merkel cell carcinoma cell lines

Exosomes constitute an evolutionary conserved mechanism of intercellular signaling. Their importance are gaining increasing such as prognostic and diagnostic markers, and potential therapeutic tool. Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive form of skin cancer with a poor prognosis. There are not available an effective systemic treatment for this type of cancer, and exosome-based therapy was proposed. We identified with high confident 164 exosome-derived proteins that were common for all four cell lines, which were annotated in ExoCarta and Vesiclepedia databases. This list includes proteins implicated in motility, metastasis and tumor progression.