Hijacking exosome biogenesis: viral glycoproteins as modular scaffolds for engineering functionalized extracellular vesicles.

ABSTRACT: Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are emerging as versatile, biologically derived nanocarriers for precision drug delivery, yet strategies to enhance their targeting efficiency remain limited. Inspired by viral tropism, this study investigates whether viral envelope glycoproteins (GPs) can co-opt native biogenesis pathways to functionalize sEV membranes. Diverse viral GPs from both DNA and RNA viruses-including VSVG, HSV-gpB, SARS-CoV-1 spike, and RD114A-are shown to efficiently incorporate into sEV membranes in human cells, independent of viral assembly. Live-cell confocal imaging and co-localization with canonical sEV markers (CD63, XPACK) reveals that these GPs hijacked endosomal trafficking routes to access the sEV biogenesis machinery. Strikingly, truncation of the ectodomain does n

SUBMITTER: Levy D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12758620 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature