More on Extracellular Vesicles in Aging, and as a Treatment for Age-Related Conditions

The review paper here might be compared with a very similar paper noted a few days ago. Any discussion of extracellular vesicles is essentially a discussion of cell signaling in general. Extracellular vesicles are membrane wrapped packages of signaling molecules that carry a sizable fraction of all of the varied signaling molecules that pass between cells. Cell signaling changes with age because cell behavior changes with age, and thus this is a vast topic, and hard to do more than touch on summary points in a single paper. It is perhaps the case that more attention is being given to extracellular vesicles these days because they can be harvested from cell cultures and used in therapies. This initially offers a logistically less complicated alternative to stem cell transplants, but potentially more interesting and more engineered therapies in the future. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane-enclosed particles secreted by cells and circulating in body fluids. Initially considered as a tool to dispose of unnecessary material, they are now considered an additional method to transmit cell signals. EV alteration with aging suggests that the modulation of EV release, in terms of number and content, could represent a target to slow aging and for the therapy of age-related diseases. First, the evaluation of EV features associated with aging (i.e., number, size, specific markers, genetic and/or biochemical content) could represent a possible biomarker of aging, us...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs