Achieving the Promise of Therapeutic Extracellular Vesicles: The Devil is in Details of Therapeutic Loading

Dhruvitkumar S. Sutaria, Mohamed Badawi, Mitch A. Phelps, Thomas D. Schmittgen

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

107 Scopus citations

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) represent a class of cell secreted organelles which naturally contain biomolecular cargo such as miRNA, mRNA and proteins. EVs mediate intercellular communication, enabling the transfer of functional nucleic acids from the cell of origin to the recipient cells. In addition, EVs make an attractive delivery vehicle for therapeutics owing to their increased stability in circulation, biocompatibility, low immunogenicity and toxicity profiles. EVs can also be engineered to display targeting moieties on their surfaces which enables targeting to desired tissues, organs or cells. While much has been learned on the role of EVs as cell communicators, the field of therapeutic EV application is currently under development. Critical to the future success of EV delivery system is the description of methods by which therapeutics can be successfully and efficiently loaded within the EVs. Two methods of loading of EVs with therapeutic cargo exist, endogenous and exogenous loading. We have therefore focused this review on describing the various published approaches for loading EVs with therapeutics.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1053-1066
Number of pages14
JournalPharmaceutical Research
Volume34
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 1 2017

Keywords

  • EV therapeutics
  • drug loading
  • exosomes
  • extracellular vesicles
  • microvesicles

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