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Cancer Advances

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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/ca.2025.12.002

Isolation and Functional Characterization of Exosomes Derived from Natural Killer Cells for Potential Application in Tumor Immunotherapy

Lanxi Xu

St. Mildred's Lightbourn School, 1080 Linbrook Rd. Oakville, ON L6J 2L1, Canada.

*Corresponding author: Lanxi Xu

Published: December 22, 2025

Abstract

Natural killer (NK) cells are important effector cells of the innate immune system and play a key role in anti-tumour immunity. In recent years, extracellular vesicles (EVs), especially exosomes, have gradually become a hotspot in tumour immunity research due to their unique function in intercellular information transfer. In this study, I focused on the function of NK cell exosomes, and systematically evaluated their interaction with tumour cells and their ability to induce apoptosis through in vitro isolation and identification, combined with fluorescent labelling, particle size detection, protein expression analysis and tumour cell coincubation experiments. The results showed that NK cell exosomes could be effectively taken up by tumour cells and significantly inhibit their proliferative activity at a certain concentration. This study provides theoretical support and an experimental basis for the application of NK cell exosomes in tumour immuno-therapy, and expands its development potential in precision medicine.

Keyword

NK cells; Exosomes; Tumour immunity; Apoptosis induction

References

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Copyright

© 2025 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

How to cite this paper

Isolation and Functional Characterization of Exosomes Derived from Natural Killer Cells for Potential Application in Tumor Immunotherapy

How to cite this paper: Lanxi Xu. (2025). Isolation and Functional Characterization of Exosomes Derived from Natural Killer Cells for Potential Application in Tumor Immunotherapy. Cancer Advances2(1), 6-16.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/ca.2025.12.002