Achieving the Promise of Therapeutic Extracellular Vesicles: The Devil is in Details of Therapeutic Loading.
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.
Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.|Department of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Dhruvitkumar S
DS
Sutaria
Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Mohamed
M
Badawi
Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Mitch A
MA
Phelps
Department of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. tschmittgen@ufl.edu.
Thomas D
TD
Schmittgen
D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry; D001688:Biological Products / Q000737:chemistry*; D001692:Biological Transport / Q000187:drug effects; D002450:Cell Communication; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems / Q000379:methods; D000067128:Extracellular Vesicles / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans
D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D001688:Biological Products
EV therapeutics; drug loading; exosomes; extracellular vesicles; microvesicles