Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan; Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States.
Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, National Taipei University of Technology, No. 1, Sec. 3, Chung-Hsiao E. Road, Taipei, 10608, Taiwan.
Colloids Surf B Biointerfaces. 2018 Nov 1;171:391-397. doi: 10.1016/j.colsurfb.2018.07.037. Epub 2018 Jul 20.
Exosomes are attractive potential carriers for drug delivery because of their natural function of transferring biomolecules among cells without eliciting immune responses. However, an obstacle to the application of exosomes for drug delivery is the difficulty in collecting sufficient numbers of these vesicles. In this study, we demonstrate treatment with calcium phosphate (CaP) particles could increase over two-fold the number of exosomes secreted from macrophage-like RAW264.7 cells and monocyte-like THP-1 cells. CaP particles were easily internalized into cells and dissolved in acidic late-endosomes or lysosomes, resulting in the rupture of their membranes followed by the release of Ca into cytosol. Moreover, we found that exosomes secreted from cells treated with CaP particles are not contaminated by the Ca released from CaP; the Ca contents in exosomes secreted from CaP particle-treated cells were similar to that in exosomes from untreated control cells. This study highlights the potential for the efficient production of exosomes using CaP particles for drug delivery.
外泌体由于其在细胞间传递生物分子而不引起免疫反应的天然功能，成为有吸引力的药物传递潜在载体。然而，外泌体作为药物传递载体的应用存在一个障碍，即难以收集足够数量的这些囊泡。在这项研究中，我们证明用磷酸钙 (CaP) 颗粒处理可以使巨噬细胞样 RAW264.7 细胞和单核细胞样 THP-1 细胞分泌的外泌体数量增加两倍以上。CaP 颗粒很容易被细胞内化，并在酸性晚期内体或溶酶体中溶解，导致其膜破裂，随后 Ca 释放到细胞质中。此外，我们发现用 CaP 颗粒处理的细胞分泌的外泌体不受 CaP 释放的 Ca 污染；用 CaP 颗粒处理的细胞分泌的外泌体中的 Ca 含量与未经处理的对照细胞中的外泌体相似。这项研究强调了使用 CaP 颗粒高效生产外泌体用于药物传递的潜力。
