Extracellular Vesicles Related Methods

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Fengyan Deng

University of Kansas Medical Center, Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology

Dr. Fengyan Deng received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2015 from Northwest A&F University, China. After that, she worked as a Research Associate at The University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Deng is a specialist in molecular biology, cellular biology, and extracellular vesicles (EVs) research and has extensive expertise in the fields of histology, immunology, and biochemistry. Her research focuses on the potential therapeutic role of different treatments induced EVs on Alzheimer’s disease (AD). AD characterized by declining memory and social performance and is acknowledged as the most commonly occurring neurodegenerative disease in the elderly. There is no cure or even a reliable treatment for AD as of now. A lifestyle intervention, such as exercise and heat treatment, can improve cognitive functions in AD patients. However, the mechanisms that mediate this change remain unknown. Increasing evidence reveals that heat shock proteins (HSPs) play important roles in AD progression by preventing protein misfolding and promoting refolding. Also lacking the consensus secretory signals, HSPs can be secreted into the extracellular environment through the EVs. Heat treatment and exercise, which increase the accumulation of HSPs in both cytosol and blood-derived EVs, have been used historically for their presumed therapeutic benefits. It is hypothesized that HSPs enriched EVs from healthy cells can get transferred to the extracellular milieu of the brain or even the brain cells, and further facilitate brain cells protection. Dr. Deng hopes to develop effective EV-based therapeutic strategies for AD.

Collection Overview

Extracellular vesicles (EV) are lipid bilayer-delimited particles that are naturally released from most cells, and present in most body fluids, including blood, cerebrospinal fluid, breast milk, saliva, urine, and so on. As a bioactive molecules’ carrier for the exchange of information between cells, EVs can induce altered pathways in biosynthesis and ion regulatory channels in recipient cells, thus playing a crucial role in cell-cell communication. Numerous studies have proved that EVs play a dual role in different disease progress: on one hand, EVs from diseased cells could accelerate the spreading of different diseases, on the other hand, healthy cells released EVs could deliver proteins or other cargos to the diseased tissue to prevent disease spreading. Due to these characters, EVs have attracted great interest in their diagnostic and prognostic values for various diseases and therapeutic purposes and have become a hot research topic currently. Techniques for EV isolation and characterization are crucial for this hot topic research. The articles in this Methods Collection will attempt to highlight methods related to EV studies. This issue will provide the readers with helpful information about different EV related techniques.