Extracellular vesicles: pathogenetic, diagnostic and therapeutic value in traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Accurate classification according to injury-specific and patient-specific characteristics is critical to help informed clinical decision-making and to the pursuit of precision medicine in TBI. Reliable biomarker signatures for improved TBI diagnostics are required but still an unmet need.

Areas covered: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) represent a new class of biomarker candidates in TBI. These nano-sized vesicles have key roles in cell signaling profoundly impacting pathogenic pathways, progression and long-term sequelae of TBI. As such EVs might provide novel neurobiological insights, enhance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying TBI pathophysiology and recovery, and serve as biomarker signatures and therapeutic targets and delivery systems.

Expert commentary: EVs are fast gaining momentum in TBI research, paving the way for new transformative diagnostic and treatment approaches. Their potential to sort out TBI variability and active involvement in the mechanisms underpinning different clinical phenotypes point out unique opportunities for improved classification, risk-stratification ad intervention, harboring promise of predictive, personalized, and even preemptive therapeutic strategies. Although a great deal of progress has been made, substantial efforts are still required to ensure the needed rigorous validation and reproducibility for clinical implementation of EVs.

KEYWORDS:

• Traumatic brain injury
• extracellular vesicles
• exosomes
• microvesicles
• TBI
• biomarker

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Italian MoH [GR-2013-02354960].