title: Extracellular vesicles as novel carriers for therapeutic molecules.
abstract: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are natural carriers of biomolecules that play central roles in cell-to-cell communications. Based on this, there have been various attempts to use EVs as therapeutic drug carriers. From chemical reagents to nucleic acids, various macromolecules were successfully loaded into EVs; however, loading of proteins with high molecular weight has been huddled with several problems. Purification of recombinant proteins is expensive and time consuming, and easily results in modification of proteins due to physical or chemical forces. Also, the loading efficiency of conventional methods is too low for most proteins. We have recently proposed a new method, the so-called exosomes for protein loading via optically reversible protein-protein interaction (EXPLORs), to overcome the limitations. Since EXPLORs are produced by actively loading of intracellular proteins into EVs using blue light without protein purification steps, we demonstrated that the EXPLOR technique significantly improves the loading and delivery efficiency of therapeutic proteins. In further in vitro and in vivo experiments, we demonstrate the potential of EXPLOR technology as a novel platform for biopharmaceuticals, by successful delivery of several functional proteins such as Cre recombinase, into the target cells. [BMB Reports 2016; 49(11): 585-586].
authors.affiliation: Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Korea.
authors.forename: Nambin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yim
authors.affiliation: Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, KAIST; Cellex Life Sciences Inc.; Cancer Metastasis Control Center, KAIST Institute for the Biocentury, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Korea.
authors.forename: Chulhee
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Choi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D051792:Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D056931:Cryptochromes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D004337:Drug Carriers / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D055354:Exosomes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D000067128:Extracellular Vesicles / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D008027:Light; D054730:Protein Interaction Domains and Motifs / Q000528:radiation effects; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D060245:Tetraspanin 29 / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D051792:Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Proteins; D056931:Cryptochromes; D004337:Drug Carriers; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D060245:Tetraspanin 29; C533832:CIB1 protein, Arabidopsis; C103618:CRY2 protein, Arabidopsis