Fig. 6

Exosomes from the sera of patients with non-recurrent melanoma suppress lung metastasis. a Representative TEM of exosomes isolated from the sera of melanoma patients. Scale bar: 100 nm. b Exosomes from the sera of healthy control donors and of patients with primary and recurrent melanoma were injected into athymic nude mice. Exosome-depleted serum from recurrent patients was used as control. Nude mice were injected i.v. three time, with 10 μg exosomes, 48 h apart followed by injection of CFSE-labeled A375 melanoma cells. The extravasated melanoma cells were counted in the lungs 24 h later. c Analysis of the data presented in b. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, and ***P < 0.001 calculated by Tukey’s multiple comparison test with Bonferroni post-test (n = 9 for tumor-free, non-recurrent and recurrent groups, n = 5 for the group treated with exosome-depleted serum, five random images per animal were analyzed). Mean and s.d. values are shown. d Patients were separated into cohorts according to survival (death from melanoma over >5-year follow-up). Exosomal PEDF was measured by ELISA and normalized to the total protein content and correlated to survival. Statistical significance was determined by two-tailed t-test. P  < 0.0003. n = 41 (survivors) and n = 79 (non-survivors). Median and s.e.m. values are shown