Insight into Extracellular Vesicle Lipid Composition and its Potential Utility for Drug Delivery

Cell-cell communication via extracellular vesicles (EVs) is involved in a large variety of pathological processes including cancer development and progression. The bilayer membrane of an EV is composed of lipids, which provide for its stability and curved structure. Additionally, these lipids are involved in EV formation, protein recruitment, and secretion, as well as uptake by recipient cells.
In this study we uncovered the fundamental mechanisms of macrophage derived exosomes interaction with cancer cells and demonstrated that macrophages derived exosomes may interact with target cells by lipid and protein-protein interactions which facilitate their internalization by macropinocytosis. We solved the lipid composition of EVs and synthesized artificial EVs based on its biological structure. These could be served as synthetic Nano- delivery tools which may allow a highly efficient delivery of therapeutic agents to cancer cells.
Our study improves the understanding of EVs physiology and present data which is essential to design of Nano-vesicles that would serve as chemotherapeutic drugs delivery systems based on the exosome uptake mechanism.