Abstract: Disclosed is a method of isolating extracellular vesicles and identifying membrane proteins therefrom. The method includes providing human plasma and/or serum; separating lipoproteins and extracellular vesicles from the human plasma and/or serum by a density gradient preparation, collecting the extracellular vesicles from the separated lipoproteins and extracellular vesicles; isolating and purifying the collected extracellular vesicles by using size exclusion chromatography; treating the isolated and purified extracellular vesicles with an aqueous solution to obtain membranes of the extracellular vesicles, wherein the aqueous solution has a pH in a range of 9 to 14; adding salt in a concentration range between 0.5-2.0M to the aqueous solution; isolating the membranes from the treated extracellular vesicles and identifying proteins on the isolated membranes by employing mass spectrometry.

Abstract: The present disclosure relates to a method of isolating extracellular vesicles directly from human tissues. The invention further relates to a method of identifying disease and tissue specific membrane proteins on extracellular vesicles by membrane isolation and proteomic analysis. The invention further relates to methods of diagnosing diseases by capturing extracellular vesicles by the use of disease specific membrane proteins from body fluids, and detecting or analyzing molecular signatures (proteome, DNA, and RNA) on captured extracellular vesicles. Moreover, the present invention relates to kits, apparatus and software required for implementing aforementioned methods.