A New Biological Strategy for Drug Delivery: Eucaryotic Cell-Derived Nanovesicles

An efficient drug delivery is the prerequisite of the successful chemotherapeutic treatments of many human diseases. Despite a great number of approaches, the improvement of drug cell internalization remains an actual research challenge. We propose a new biological delivery system based on the extracellular vesicles released by a non-pathological eukaryotic microorganism, Dictyostelium discoideum. After a summary of the main characteristics of these extracellular vesicles, including of their lipid bilayer that appears as a good candidate for initiating membrane fusion, followed by delivery of their encapsulated drug, the capacity of these vesicles to convey drugs into human cells was demonstrated in vitro on two tumor cell lines, resistant leukaemia K562r and cervix carcinoma HeLa cells. A comparison with other extracellular vesicles, like exosomes or bacteria-derived particles, stresses the unique properties of Dictyostelium extracellular nanovesicles for drug delivery.