New tool unlocks the body’s ‘messages in a bottle’ to detect and treat disease

Have you ever dreamed of writing a heartfelt letter, sealing it in a bottle, and letting the ocean carry it to someone special? It’s a romantic image we’ve seen in movies like “Message in a Bottle.” But did you know this beautiful act of connection is happening inside your body every minute of every day?

Our cells, much like us, are constantly trying to communicate. But instead of ink and paper, they send out tiny biological packages called extracellular vesicles (EVs). These are the body’s real-life messages in a bottle, carrying precious cargo—like proteins and genetic material—from one cell to another. Each EV holds a snapshot of its sender’s identity and condition, making them incredibly promising for diagnosing diseases and tailoring treatments.

“While we’ve developed powerful ways to read messages from cells, like sequencing and proteomics, we’re still struggling to decode EVs with the same precision. It’s like thousands of bottles washing up on shore, and we don’t know which ones carry lifesaving information,” says Assistant Professor Chi-An Cheng from the Department of Pharmacy at National Taiwan University (NTU), who led a study published in Small.

Last year, Dr. Cheng authored a perspective article outlining long-standing bottlenecks in the EV field. Now, her team offers a solution.

They’ve developed a technology called SHINER, short for Subpopulation Homogeneous Isolation and Nondestructive EV Release, designed to gently capture and release specific EV subpopulations without damaging them.

To picture how SHINER works, “Imagine the claw machines you see in Taiwanese night markets. They may look simple, but grabbing exactly what you want—a rare plush toy, for example—takes real skill and precision,” explains Dr. Cheng.

SHINER is like a molecular claw machine. Using specially designed “claws” made from antibodies and DNA, it reaches into the crowded sea of EVs, grabs the ones with just the right surface markers, and gently lifts them out, intact and ready to be read.

At the core of this technology is a clever tool called SWITCHER, which ensures that only EVs with a specific molecular “barcode” are captured. Then, a matching DNA “key” activates the claw to gently release the captured EVs unharmed. No harsh chemicals. No broken “bottles.” Just pure, readable messages, delivered safely to scientists for analysis.

What makes this work even more exciting is that SHINER doesn’t just work in theory. The team showed it can purify EVs from real-world biological samples, like blood, while preserving their full structure and function. When paired with the earlier invention by the team, the ultrasensitive EV single-molecule array, SHINER opens the door to next-generation diagnostics and therapeutics. Doctors could one day use it to detect cancer earlier, monitor treatment response, or even deliver precision drugs using EVs as natural carriers.

This is more than a technical upgrade—it’s a poetic leap forward. We’re finally getting better at reading the romantic, life-defining “messages in a bottle” that our cells send across the sea of our own biology. And with the SHINER “claw machine,” we just might catch the one that changes everything.