Exosomes / Microvesicles : Novel Mechanisms of Cell-Cell Communication (E4) 2016

An emerging area of great excitement in the cell biology and pharmaceutical/biotech communities involves the release and subsequent uptake of membrane-enclosed packets of information, often referred to as extracellular vesicles. These non-traditional vesicles contain a potent array of cargo, including hundreds of proteins such as growth factors and receptors, metabolic enzymes, transcription factors and a large variety of RNA transcripts as well as DNA.

Extracellular vesicles span a range of sizes from 50 nm to 1 micron and comprise a heterogenous set, including exosomes and microvesicles that appear to be generated through distinct mechanisms. Extracellular vesicles are thought to serve as a means of cell-to-cell communication and contribute to a number of disease states, including cancer and neurodegeneration, thus offering new targets for therapeutic intervention and novel possibilities for diagnostic biomarkers.