Dr. Eduardo Reategui has developed methods to identify SARS-CoV-2 RNA and protein in EVs. Image courtesy of Andina Podcast.
Medford MA, April 19, 2026 – PolyBio Research Foundation is increasingly advancing a new class of diagnostics built on extracellular vesicle (EV)–based “liquid biopsy” technologies, supporting multiple new projects that aim to detect persistent infections and their biological impact in patients with Long COVID, Chronic Lyme Disease and related conditions.
These approaches are grounded in the fact that pathogens that drive chronic illness often reside in tissues and release only faint, intermittent signals into accessible fluids like blood or urine. EVs – nano to micrometer-sized particles released by cells – offer a solution. They carry protected cargo from their tissue of origin, including pathogen-derived molecules and host response signals, enabling a noninvasive window into otherwise inaccessible disease biology.
From concept to implementation
Dr. Alessandra Luchini is has developed EV-based platforms to identify Borrelia and associated inflammatory projects. Image courtesy of George Mason University.
PolyBio is funding multiple new projects that operationalize this concept across multiple disease contexts and biological compartments.
One newly supported analysis, led by Eduardo Reategui, focuses on detecting SARS-CoV-2 persistence in patients with Long COVID by interrogating EV-associated viral material in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. The team is using a highly sensitive platform capable of capturing intact EVs and virions and simultaneously measuring viral RNA, protein, and host inflammatory signals. This approach allows researchers to directly link viral persistence with tissue-specific immune responses – an essential step toward understanding disease mechanisms and identifying actionable biomarkers.
A complementary project led by Alessandra Luchini expands the EV liquid biopsy paradigm into urine, using urinary extracellular vesicles (uEVs) to detect both microbial and host-derived signals in samples collected from patients with infection-associated chronic illness. This work focuses on identifying antigens created by the Lyme pathogen Borrelia alongside related markers of neuroimmune dysfunction, tissue injury, and inflammation. By combining pathogen detection with multi-organ injury signatures, the project aims to define biologically distinct patient subgroups that can be targeted in future clinical trials.
A shift toward multi-layered diagnostics
Together, these projects illustrate a broader strategic shift: moving beyond diagnostics that simply ask whether a pathogen is present, toward platforms that can simultaneously measure pathogen activity, host response, and tissue involvement.
EV-based diagnostics are uniquely suited for this task. They protect low-abundance molecules from degradation, enable detection of signals originating in tissues such as the brain or lungs, and allow multiplexed analysis of pathogen and host biology from a single sample. In the Luchini project, for example, uEVs are used to detect not only Borrelia-derived proteins, but also markers of neural injury (e.g., GFAP, NfL), autonomic dysfunction, and organ-specific damage across lung, heart, liver, and gut systems.
About PolyBio Research Foundation
PolyBio Research Foundation is a 501(c)(3) advancing research on how viral, bacterial, and parasite infections drive chronic disease and aging. We build collaborative projects that identify, diagnose, and treat root causes of infection-associated chronic illness.