Selective Lipoprotein Removal Enables High‐Purity EV Isolation from Plasma via Aptamer‐Based Mesh Filtration
Lipoproteins pose a major challenge to plasma extracellular vesicle (EV) isolation due to their abundance and physical similarity to EVs. Here, we present ApoFilter, a rapid and selective aptamer-based mesh-filtration platform that efficiently depletes ApoA1- and ApoB100-positive lipoproteins. High-affinity aptamers immobilized onto nylon mesh layers capture targeted lipoproteins in a spin-column format, enabling rapid (1 min) separation under gravity-driven flow. ApoFilter removed >99% of targeted lipoproteins (HDL and (V)LDL) from purified and plasma samples, with negligible capture of non-target components and no compromise to EV integrity. When integrated with conventional EV isolation methods-including ultracentrifugation (UC), size-exclusion chromatography (SEC), and ExoTFF-ApoFilter consistently eliminated lipoprotein contaminants across all workflows. This simple and rapid system addresses a key bottleneck in EV research, enabling the collection of ultrapure EVs suitable for downstream molecular analyses and translational applications.
Authors
- Sangkuk Jeon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0436-1036)
- YJ Kim
- Sehyun Shin
Institutions
- Korea University (KR)
- Bio-Medical Science (South Korea) (KR)
- Korea University of Science and Technology (KR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Small
- Published
- 2026-03-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202514724
- Primary Topic
- Extracellular vesicles in disease
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00