Extracellular Vesicle Mimetics: Preparation from Top-Down Approaches and Biological Functions

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have attracted attention as delivery vehicles due to their structure, composition, and unique properties in regeneration and immunomodulation. However, difficulties during production and isolation processes of EVs limit their large-scale clinical applications. EV mimetics (EVMs), prepared via top-down strategies that improve the yield of nanoparticles while retaining biological properties similar to those of EVs have been used to address these limitations. Herein, the preparation of EVMs is reviewed and their characteristics in terms of structure, composition, targeting ability, cellular uptake mechanism, and immunogenicity, as well as their strengths, limitations, and future clinical application prospects as EV alternatives are summarized.

Automated summary

This article reviews the preparation of EV mimetics (EVMs) as alternatives to EVs using a top-down approach. EVMs possess similar structure and composition to EVs, and exhibit good targeting ability and cellular uptake mechanism. However, EVMs also have certain limitations and immunogenicity issues. Despite these drawbacks, EVMs show great potential for clinical applications.