The Emerging Role of the Interaction of Extracellular Vesicle and Autophagy—Novel Insights into Neurological Disorders

Abstract

Eukaryotic cells release different types of extracellular vesicles (EVs), including exosomes, apoptotic bodies and microvesicles. EVs carry proteins, lipids and nucleic acids specific to cells and cell states. Autophagy is an intracellular degradation process, which, along with EVs, can significantly affect the development and progression of neurological diseases and, therefore, has been the hotspot. Generally, EVs and autophagy are closely associated. EVs and autophagy can interact with each other. On the one hand, the level of autophagy in target cells is closely related to the secretion and transport of EVs. In another, the application of EVs provides a great opportunity for adjuvant treatment of neurological disorders, for which autophagy is an excellent target. EVs can release their cargos into target cells, which, in turn, regulate the autophagic level of target cells through autophagy-related proteins directly and the non-coding RNA, signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), phosphodiesterase enzyme (PDE) 1-B, etc. signaling pathways indirectly, thus regulating the development of related neurological disorders.

Keywords:

• extracellular vesicle
• autophagy
• neurological disorders
• non-coding RNA
• STAT3
• PDE1-B

Acknowledgments

We thank the support of the China Scholarship Council for YL Pan, W Wei and WQ Xin.

Disclosure

Wei Wei and Yongli Pan should be considered co-first authors.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.