IBT Study Explores Exosomal LINE-1 as a Liquid Biopsy Biomarker in Lung Cancer

Nearly 85% of lung cancers are non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Early and accurate diagnosis is essential for improving patient outcomes, but traditional tissue biopsies are invasive, cannot always be repeated, and may not fully capture the complexity of a patient's disease.

Researchers at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology (IBT) at Texas A&M University studied whether a mobile genetic element known as LINE-1 (Long Interspersed Element-1)—sometimes described as a "jumping gene"—can be measured in circulating exosomes as part of a liquid biopsy approach to lung cancer. Liquid biopsy is a minimally invasive test that uses a blood sample rather than tissue.

Dr. Abeer A.I. Hassanin, a visiting scholar in the Center for Genomic and Precision Medicine, conducted the research in the laboratory of Dr. Kenneth S. Ramos, MD, PhD, executive director of IBT and director of the center.

What the Study Examined

According to the investigators, LINE-1 is normally tightly controlled in healthy cells but can become abnormally activated in lung cancer. Its activation has been linked to genomic instability, tumor progression, and cancer aggressiveness. The study investigated whether LINE-1 messenger RNA (mRNA) carried in circulating exosomes—tiny vesicles released into the bloodstream—could serve as biomarkers in a liquid biopsy platform for lung cancer.

What the Study Reported

The research was published in MedComm in 2025. The investigators reported that exosomal LINE-1 mRNA profiles distinguished lung cancer from controls in both sexes and captured clinical features including cancer stage, tumor size, lymph node involvement, distant metastasis, and smoking history. The authors concluded that LINE-1 mRNA in plasma-derived exosomes may be clinically useful as a non-invasive liquid biopsy for precision profiling of lung cancer (Hassanin et al., 2025).

Readers can review the full publication at https://doi.org/10.1002/mco2.70472.

Reference

Hassanin, A. A. I., et al. (2025). Article published in MedComm. https://doi.org/10.1002/mco2.70472