Smoker Extracellular Vesicles Influence on Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) include a variety of nanoscale membranous vesicles (exosomes, microvesicles, microparticles). EVs are released into the interstitial fluid from a wide variety of normal or diseased cells. Analysis of EVs and their content maybe useful as disease biomarkers as they reflect the contents of cells of origin, differ between normal and diseased tissue and can be reliably detected. EVs may thus act as biomarkers of diverse pathologies like cancer, and detection of these biomarkers maybe applied to early diagnosis or assessment of prognosis in patients with cancer. EVs indeed contain both mRNAs and non-coding RNAs, such as small regulatory microRNAs (miRNAs).