The state of protein phosphorylation can be a key determinant of cellular physiology such as early-stage cancer, but the development of phosphoproteins in biofluids for disease diagnosis remains elusive. Here we demonstrate a strategy to isolate and identify phosphoproteins in extracellular vesicles (EVs) from human plasma as potential markers to differentiate disease from healthy states. We identified close to 10,000 unique phosphopeptides in EVs isolated from small volumes of plasma samples. Using label-free quantitative phosphoproteomics, we identified 144 phosphoproteins in plasma EVs that are significantly higher in patients diagnosed with breast cancer compared with healthy controls. Several biomarkers were validated in individual patients using paralleled reaction monitoring for targeted quantitation. This study demonstrates that the development of phosphoproteins in plasma EV as disease biomarkers is highly feasible and may transform cancer screening and monitoring.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 300. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 October 2025.
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#146,521
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Outputs from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
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#55
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Altmetric has tracked 34,492,055 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 119,091 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 40.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 955 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
