Notre Dame bioengineer explores how tissue-bound particles could advance regenerative medicine
Scientists used to think that when a cell released a tiny, membrane-covered bubble—an extracellular vesicle (EV)—it was just taking out the trash. Then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, researchers discovered that these circulating microscopic bubbles were actually part of a critical communication network, carrying molecular instructions that affect how cells grow, divide, repair damaged tissue, respond to infection, and communicate with one another.
While these circulating EVs initially commanded the spotlight, another type of EV—one that stays put inside the tissue–has emerged as a potentially important player in the quest to engineer tissue to address age- and disease-associated dysfunction.
Pinar Zorlutuna, Roth-Gibson Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Notre Dame, and her lab have explored in an invited review paper published in Nature Bioengineering Reviews that these matrix-bound EVs (MBVs) could be promising tools for regenerative medicine, tissue repair and disease diagnostics.
