Profiling of Tumor Cell-delivered Exosome by Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy-based Biosensor for Evaluation of Nasopharyngeal Cancer Radioresistance.

Although the advancement of radiotherapy significantly improved the survival of nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC), radioresistance associated with recurrence and poor outcomes still remains a daunting challenge in the clinical scenario. Currently, effective biomarkers and convenient detection methods for predicting radioresistance have not been well established. Here, the surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) combined with proteomics was employed to firstly profile the characteristic spectral patterns of exosomes secreted from self-established NPC radioresistance cells, and revealed specific variations of proteins expression during radioresistance formation, including collagen alpha-2 (I) chain (COL1A2) that is associated with a favorable prognosis in NPC and is negatively associated with DNA repair scores and DNA repair-related genes via bioinformatic analysis. Furthermore, deep learning model-based diagnostic model was generated to accurately identify the exosomes from radioresistance group. Our work demonstrates the promising potential of exosomes as a novel biomarker for predicting the radioresistance and develops a rapid and sensitive liquid biopsy method that would provide a personalized and precise strategy for clinical NPC treatment. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.