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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 May 27.
Published in final edited form as: Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol. 2014 Oct 3;55:439–464. doi: 10.1146/annurev-pharmtox-010814-124630

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Strategies for incorporating therapeutic agents into extracellular vesicles (EVs). EVs can carry DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, or drugs, which are incorporated via various mechanisms. ❶ Directing highly oligomeric proteins to EVs using plasma membrane anchors (100). ❷ Including zipcode-like sequences in the 3′ untranslated region to facilitate mRNA loading into EVs (105). ❸ Overexpressing mRNA to drive incorporation into EVs by passive loading. ❹ Delivering an adeno-associated virus expression vector termed a vexosome (114). ❺ Loading EVs with cargo by physical methods, including mixing (e.g., for curcumin) (71) and electroporation for drugs (74) or RNA (76).