As was discovered in recent years, RNA is not confined to individual cells, but it is also part of different types of extracellular vesicles secreted by cells including ectosomes, exosomes, oncosomes and others. Thus, RNAs isolated from these extracellular vesicles could be used as proxies to determine states of cells in various healthy or pathological tissues.
Currently, the research is focused mainly on small circulating RNAs like miRNAs. We decided to study long circulating RNA species.
In this work our main goal was to establish whether there are detectable differences in levels of cell free mRNAs between healthy donors and patients with lymphoma at the time of diagnosis. We believe that the differences might not only help to identify changes that are occurring during tumorigenesis but might also eventually reveal mechanisms, that direct RNAs in these secretion vesicles.
Our preliminary data suggest the possibility of using of extracellular RNAs for monitoring of lymphomas associated RNA in plasma. To discover their real potential, more patients and kinetics studies have to be done.