Characteristics and Roles of Exosomes in Cardiovascular Disease

Abstract

Exosomes are nano-sized biological membrane-enclosed vesicles that contain a cell-specific cargo of proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids that are released and taken up by most cell types, thereby inducing expression and functional changes via horizontal transfer of cargos between cells. Thus, exosomes present a largely unknown "cell-to-cell" communication system, which is now increasingly being investigated for diagnostic and therapeutic use in cardiovascular disease (CVD). The purpose of this review is to summarize recent findings on the properties and roles of exosomes in a variety of physiological and pathological settings related to CVD. We focus on available information on exosome-mediated intercellular communication relevant to myocardial injury, repair, and regeneration. Finally, we address the promise of exosomes as valuable diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, and their potential use as therapeutic tools in CVD. Exosomes remain largely unexplored for therapeutic use in the field of cardiovascular diagnosis and medicine. A more detailed characterization of cardiac exosomes shed by different components of the heart will be of fundamental importance to address specific changes in the profile of exosomal microRNAs and proteins, which will enable the clinical use of exosomes as minimally invasive diagnostic tools and vehicles for delivery of targeted therapies for CVD.

Exosomal miRNAs in tumor microenvironment

“…Exosomes can regulate the immune response and inflammation, possibly through transfer and presentation of antigen peptides, to induce expression of inflammatory genes in recipient cells [64,65]. In metabolism and cardiovascular diseases, exosomes induce metabolic disorders in adipocytes and islet cells [66,67]. Exosomes may impair the formation of neurotoxic oligomers and promote neurodegeneration [68][69][70].…”

Exosomes of pasteurized milk: potential pathogens of Western diseases

“…Notably, milk-derived exosomes and their miR content are taken up by human macrophages [47]. Exosome-derived miRs are regarded as potential biomarkers of atherosclerosis [198,199]. It has recently been demonstrated that miR-148a promotes the differentiation of monocytes into macrophages and induces M1 but inhibits M2 polarization [200].…”

Injectable Hydrogel-Based Nanocomposites for Cardiovascular Diseases

“…Though stem cell treatment is one of the effective strategies for the CVDs, the stem cell clinical transplantation is limited by the low cell implantation and survival rate . Exosomes have recently become recognized as new candidates for cell-free treatment (Emanueli et al, 2015;Davidson et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2017). Exosomes, extracellular vesicles derived from endosomes and the vital mediators of intercellular communication (Ibrahim and Marbán, 2016), are released by major cardiac cells, including cardiomyocytes, fibroblasts and endothelial cells (Barile et al, 2017), to regulate cellular function (Poe and Knowlton, 2018).…”