An overview of exosomes: From biology to emerging roles in immune response

Abstract

The discovery that extracellular vesicles are secreted by various cells into extracellular environment has stimulated a large number of studies in order to elucidate their biological activities. Of the released membrane-bound vesicles, specialized nanoparticles called exosomes are currently highlighted. Today, exosomes are known to be associated with diverse pathologies and represent a variety of immune functions. Recent findings that exosomes deliver lipids, cytosolic proteins, mRNA, miRNA and genetic materials to recipient cells, have been a key milestone in the field. During the past few years, many groups have declared that exosomes are naturally present in body fluids as well as their secretion by nearly all cell types. Because of the fact that exosomes have possible functions in wide-range of pathogenesis from immunology to neurobiology, they become interest of biomedicine. Their potential utility in clinical applications as a therapeutic tool or biomarker is an intense area of research to combat numerous diseases. In this review, we summarize influential developments of exosome biology and their biological functions, exclusively on the immune response.

Key words: extracellular vesicles, exosomes, immune response