Special Issue

Topic: Extracellular Vesicles in Intercellular Communication and Clinical Applications: A decade of Achievements

A Special Issue of Extracellular Vesicles and Circulating Nucleic Acids

ISSN 2767-6641 (Online)

Submission deadline: 15 Jan 2023

Guest Editor(s)

Randy Schekman

Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Y. Peng Loh

Senior Investigator, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.

Special Issue Introduction

The Special Issue “Extracellular Vesicles in Intercellular Communication and Clinical Applications: A decade of Achievements” was conceived to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Randy W. Schekman, James E. Rothman and Thomas C. Südhof being jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of the “machinery regulating vesicle traffic”. The early work on the mechanism of secretory vesicle biogenesis and trafficking has guided new efforts to understand the origin and function of extracellular vesicles (EVs). Extracellular vesicles were originally thought to be a waste disposal mechanism to protect cells. Since then, EVs have been implicated in having an important role in intercellular communication, not only in the animal kingdom, but in plants, fungi and bacteria as well. Also, EVs serve as biomarkers in many diseases and for therapeutic use in drug delivery. Indeed, the field of extracellular vesicles has grown exponentially with progress in many directions, both academically in understanding basic cell biological concepts and commercially, attracting the development of many clinical applications from disease diagnostics, vaccines to therapy.

This Special Issue will consist of a compendium of invited articles from researchers known for their expertise in their specific areas of extracellular vesicle studies, with a couple of chapters on the historical perspective of the field in classical secretory vesicles, leading to current research on extracellular vesicles. The contributions will cover some of the most exciting developments in the field over the last decade. The topics include chapters on extracellular vesicle biogenesis, secretion and uptake by recipient cells; isolation and purification; role in diseases such as cancer, prion, immune and neurological disorders; function of bacterial, plant and fungal extracellular vesicles; biomedical application of EVs in diagnostics and engineered EVs in drug delivery and therapeutics. (Acknowledgments: Ashley Lan Xiao, NIH, for the cover design; Cheng Jiang, University of Oxford, for image support; James R. Edgar, University of Cambridge, and © Institute of Cell Biology, University of Freiburg, for providing electron micrographs of EVs and SVs, respectively. Contributors include:

Randy Schekman, UC Berkley, USA
Y. Peng Loh, NIH, USA
Jacopo Meldolesi, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Italy
Chiara Zurzolo, Institut Pasteur, France
Robert J. Coffey, Vanderbilt University, USA
Meta Kuehn, Duke University, USA
David Walt, Harvard University, USA
Hailin Jin, University of California, Riverside, USA
Roger Innes, Indiana University, USA
Samir El-Andaloussi, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Graca Raposo, Institut Curie, France
Inge Zuhorn, University in Groningen, The Netherlands
David Lyden, Weill Cornell Medical College, USA
Vivian Hook, University of California, San Diego, USA

Submission to this issue is by invitation only.