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Review
. 2023 Jun 15;15(6):1738.
doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics15061738.

Extracellular Vesicles and Infection: From Hijacked Machinery to Therapeutic Tools

Diogo Gonçalves  1 , Sandra N Pinto  1 , Fábio Fernandes  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Extracellular Vesicles and Infection: From Hijacked Machinery to Therapeutic Tools

Diogo Gonçalves et al. Pharmaceutics. .

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) comprise a broad range of secreted cell-derived membrane vesicles. Beyond their more well-characterized role in cell communication, in recent years, EVs have also been shown to play important roles during infection. Viruses can hijack the biogenesis of exosomes (which are small EVs) to promote viral spreading. Additionally, these exosomes are also important mediators in inflammation and immune responses during both bacterial and viral infections. This review summarizes these mechanisms while also describing the impact of bacterial EVs in regulating immune responses. Finally, the review also focuses on the potential and challenges of using EVs, in particular, to tackle infectious diseases.

Keywords: bacterial infection; biofilms; biogenesis; exosomes; therapeutic EV; viral infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Exosome biogenesis and extracellular release. The processes of formation and release of exosomes comprise several steps: (i) formation of early endosomes from the trans-Golgi network or by endocytosis from the plasma membrane and/or; (ii) Maturation of early endosomes into late endosomes; (iii) formation of multi-vesicular bodies (MVB) through membrane invagination of late endosomes, giving rise to ILVs; (iv) MVB fusion with the plasma membrane and release of exosomes. Alternatively, lysosomes or autophagosomes can fuse with multivesicular bodies and degrade them. Created with BioRender.com.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Potential effects of EVs in viral infections. (A) Incorporation of viral components in exosomes released from infected cells. (B) EVs from infected host cells have been reported to induce both the promotion and inhibition of viral infection. The figure describes some of these reported effects as described in the text. Created with BioRender.com.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Biogenesis of bacterial extracellular vesicles (BEV) by blebbing of the outer membrane (A) and SEM visualization (B); the diameter of these vesicles is commonly smaller than 400 nm. OM: outer membrane, PG: peptidoglycan, IM: Inner membrane. Figure (B) shows a Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain, PAO1 mutant deficient in Opr86, producing several extracellular vesicles. The scale bar corresponds to 1 µm. Figure (B) is reprinted with permission from Ref. [143] Copyright 2011 Environmental Microbiology.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Possible uses of EVs as therapeutic or diagnostic tools in infection diseases. Created with BioRender.com.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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