Abstract
Exosomes are cell-secreted nanovesicles that naturally contain biomolecular cargoes such as lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. Exosomes mediate intercellular communication, enabling the transfer biological signals from the donor cells to the recipient cells. Recently, exosomes are emerging as promising drug delivery vehicles due to their strong stability in blood circulation, high biocompatibility, low immunogenicity, and natural targeting ability. In particular, exosomes derived from specific types of cells can carry endogenous signaling molecules with therapeutic potential for cancer treatment, thus presenting a significant impact on targeted drug delivery and therapy. Furthermore, exosomes can be engineered to display targeting moieties on their surface or to load additional therapeutic agents. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of exosome biogenesis and the development of efficient exosome engineering techniques will provide new avenues to establish convincing clinical therapeutic strategies based on exosomes. This review focuses on the therapeutic applications of exosomes derived from various cells and the exosome engineering technologies that enable the accurate delivery of various types of cargoes to target cells for cancer therapy.
Highlights
Extracellular vesicles (EV) are one of the means of intercellular communication between adjacent and distant cells
EVs refer to all membrane vesicles that are naturally released from cells and are classified based on their biogenesis pathway, function, size, etc
EVs are commonly composed of three members: (i) apoptotic bodies released by the cell undergoing programmed cell death, with size ranging from 500 to 1000 nm, (ii) microvesicles emerging from the budding of plasma membranes with a diameter of 150–500 nm, and (iii) exosomes with a diameter of 40–150 nm that are derived from endosomes (Figure 1) [2]
Summary
Extracellular vesicles (EV) are one of the means of intercellular communication between adjacent and distant cells. Exosomes play essential roles as communication mediators between cells and contain many important biomolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids [3]. These cargoes of exosomes vary depending on the origin of exosomes and their biological state. Due to the discovery of these roles of exosomes, they have recently received the most research attention as a promising drug delivery tool that can overcome the shortcomings of artificial nanoparticles. In contrast to artificial position of exosomes similar to the cell membrane of exosomes. Released can be taken up via Released exosomes can be taken via different mechanisms: endocytosis, membrane fusion,exosomes receptor–ligand interaction.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
