Extracellular vesicles: Small but strong

摘要

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a disease affecting small pulmonary arteries characterized by hyperplasia and hypertrophy of vascular smooth muscle cells and enhanced proliferation of endothelial cells. These events result in a remodelling of pulmonary vessels leading to an increase in the mean pulmonary arterial pressure and right ventricle overload and, ultimately, death. Growing evidences based on data obtained in patients with PAH indicate that the severity of PAH is associated with an increase of circulating small extracellular vesicles released from cells undergoing apoptosis or stimulation. Several discrepancies have been described concerning the origin of these vesicles in PAH, probably due to the heterogeneity of patients. These drawbacks may be overcome by using animal models of PAH induced by chronic hypoxic conditions or by monocrotaline treatment. Besides being bio-markers, extracellular vesicles can also serve to transfer a large number of messages between cells due to their protein, lipid, and cytoplasmic contents (e.g. mRNA and miRNA).