Apoptotic Cell-Derived Extracellular Vesicles – A Matter of Death and Life
Andrew Devitt,
Director of Research for the Cell & Tissue Biomedical Research Group,
Aston University
Damaged, aged or unwanted cells are removed from the body by apoptosis. This highly orchestrated programme results in the exposure of ‘flags’ at the dying cell surface and the release of attractive signals to recruit phagocytes. Together these changes ensure efficient phagocytic removal of dying cells which is central to the control of inflammation. We have shown that dying lymphocytes release Apoptotic Cell-derived Extracellular Vesicles (ACdEV) and these are strongly attractive to phagocytes in vitro. Our work seeks to characterize ACdEV, their release, physical characteristics and their molecular structure-to-function relationships.
Our work describes the release of ACdEV throughout apoptosis and reveals that ACdEV and ICAM-3 are important mediators of phagocyte attraction to sites of cell death. The magnitude of ACdEV attractive capacity is dependent upon the timing of release within the apoptosis programme. Furthermore, the inhibition of phagocyte migration in the presence of anti-ICAM-3 mAbs suggests ICAM-3 may be a useful target for modulation of monocyte recruitment for therapeutic gain.
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