Strategies for Application of Extracellular Vesicles in Solid Cancer Therapy

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are key players in cellular communication and signaling in the health status and diseases. EVs have rather small size and long half-life upon secretion into circulation. This long half-life along with their immune privileged profile and the ability to carry biotherapeutics to the target cells have made EVs an issue of prominent current interest among scientists as an alternative schedule in cancer therapy.

PubMed and Google scholar were searched for relevant articles from journals with high impact factor. Among 400 articles found, 40 articles met the criteria for interpretation and were selected for descriptive review. Original and review articles published in the last ten years were used in this study.

Tumor-derived EVs can be targeted for reducing cancer cell survival and increasing their apoptosis. They are also applicable for drug delivery to primary or metastatic tumors. An effective approach is to load nanoparticles into EVs for targeting a specific cell type in tumor ecosystem. Their application in nano delivery systems for cancer therapy has been the focus of attention.

The current studies have focused on the possibility of using EVs as biomarkers in several diseases, as targets to be removed for recovery of the patient health, and as vehicles for immunotherapy. In this review article, we discussed the importance of EV suppression or EV-based strategy for targeting solid cancers