Table 1.

Multiple roles of exosomes in cancer.

Function in Cancer	Specific Role	References
Help Tumor Cells to Evade the Immune System	Activate NK cells	[55]
	Prevent DC antigen presentation	[57,59]
	Favor an immunosuppressive phenotype in macrophages	[67]
	Induce differentiation of myeloid cells towards MDSCs	[70]
	Induce proliferation of TReg cells	[60]
	Prevent proliferation and activation of effector T cells	[62,64]
Drive Tumor Development and Progression	Induce tumor growth and transformation and inhibit cancer cell death	[75,76,77,78]
	Stimulate angiogenesis	[51,79]
	Contribute to drug resistance	[80,81]
	Extracellular matrix remodeling	[82,83]
	Promote EMT	[84,85]
	Induce metabolic reprograming	[86]
Promote metastasis	Educate the cells and trigger inflammatory responses at the metastatic site	[71,72]
	Promote the recruitment of suppressive immune cells to promote the formation of a pre-metastatic niche	[71,72,73,74]

Abbreviations: dendritic cells, DCs; epithelial–mesenchymal transition, EMT; myeloid-derived suppressor cells, MDSCs; natural killer cells, NK cells; regulatory T cells, TReg cells.