Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Jun:91:101155.
doi: 10.1016/j.mam.2022.101155. Epub 2022 Nov 28.

Extracellular vesicles as personalized medicine

Affiliations
Review

Extracellular vesicles as personalized medicine

Danielle J Beetler et al. Mol Aspects Med. 2023 Jun.

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are released from all cells in the body, forming an important intercellular communication network that contributes to health and disease. The contents of EVs are cell source-specific, inducing distinct signaling responses in recipient cells. The specificity of EVs and their accumulation in fluid spaces that are accessible for liquid biopsies make them highly attractive as potential biomarkers and therapies for disease. The duality of EVs as favorable (therapeutic) or unfavorable (pathological) messengers is context dependent and remains to be fully determined in homeostasis and various disease states. This review describes the use of EVs as biomarkers, drug delivery vehicles, and regenerative therapeutics, highlighting examples involving viral infections, cancer, and neurological diseases. There is growing interest to provide personalized therapy based on individual patient and disease characteristics. Increasing evidence suggests that EV biomarkers and therapeutic approaches are ideal for personalized medicine due to the diversity and multifunctionality of EVs.

Keywords: Cancer; Immune response; Nanomedicine; Neurological disease; Regenerative medicine; Viruses.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest. The work has been performed with partial support from National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant TL1 TR002380 (to DJB, DND), U54 TR002377 (to DJB, DND, DF), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) grants R21 AI145356, R21 AI154927 (to DF), R21 AI152318 (to JW and DF), and R21 AI163302 (to KAB), National Institute on Aging (NIA) grants R01 AG072719, R01 AG054199, R01 AG067763, R01 AG066429, R01 AG054672 (to TI), National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) grant R01 HL164520 (to DF), American Heart Association grant 20TPA35490415 (to DF), a Mayo Clinic Team Science Award (to DF), the Mayo Clinic Center for Regenerative Medicine in Florida (to JW and DF), the University of Queensland grant (to JW), and Ionis Pharmaceuticals Ion-ARPA Operation Payload Delivery grant (to JW). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Biogenic Nanoparticles.
Biogenic nanoparticles include extracellular vesicles (EVs) and other nanosized extracellular particles. Newer inclusions are exomeres: non-membranous nanoparticles smaller than 50 nm, with functional contents secreted by cells (H. Zhang et al., 2018), oncosomes: EVs released from cancer cells ranging between 100 nm and 4 μm (Meehan et al., 2016), and migrasomes: large nano- and microvesicles used for cell migration and intercellular signaling (da Rocha-Azevedo and Schmid, 2015; Ma et al., 2015). More well-established nanoparticles include lipoproteins (Feingold, 2000), viruses (Louten, 2016), and protein aggregates (Goodsell and Olson, 1993). This figure was created in ©BioRender-biorender.com.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. EVs in Pathology.
Many studies have linked EVs to the pathogenesis of various diseases, references are listed in Supplement Table 1. The figure depicts a variety of these diseases, grouped by major organ system. This list is constantly growing. This figure was created in ©BioRender-biorender.com.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.. EVs Impact the Hallmarks of Cancer.
Hallmarks of cancer promoted by EVs depicted in green, other cancer promoters in grey. Adapted from “Hallmarks of cancer (2011 update), including emerging hallmarks and enabling factors”, by ©BioRender-biorender.com. Retrieved from https://app.biorender.com/biorender-templates.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.. Representative image of dSTORM tetraspanin profiling of an EV.
CD9 (yellow), CD81 (teal), CD63 (purple) using ONI EV profiling kit and precision depiction. Scale bar: 100 nm.

References

    1. Administration U. S. F. a. D., 2016. Personalized medicine: a biological approach to patient treatment. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/news-events-human-drugs/personalized-medicine-....
    1. Admyre C, Bohle B, Johansson SM, Focke-Tejkl M, Valenta R, Scheynius A, Gabrielsson S, 2007. B cell-derived exosomes can present allergen peptides and activate allergen-specific T cells to proliferate and produce TH2-like cytokines. J. Allergy Clin. Immunol. 120 (6), 1418–1424. 10.1016/j.jaci.2007.06.040. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Agosta F, Dalla Libera D, Spinelli EG, Finardi A, Canu E, Bergami A, Furlan R, 2014. Myeloid microvesicles in cerebrospinal fluid are associated with myelin damage and neuronal loss in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease. Ann. Neurol. 76 (6), 813–825. 10.1002/ana.24235. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Agouni A, Parray AS, Akhtar N, Mir FA, Bourke PJ, Joseph S, Shuaib A, 2019. There is selective increase in pro-thrombotic circulating extracellular vesicles in acute ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack: a study of patients from the Middle East and southeast asia. Front. Neurol. 10, 251. 10.3389/fneur.2019.00251. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ali M, Pham A, Wang X, Wolfram J, Pham S, 2020. Extracellular vesicles for treatment of solid organ ischemia-reperfusion injury. Am. J. Transplant. 20 (12), 3294–3307. 10.1111/ajt.16164. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources