Harnessing extracellular vesicles for efficient siRNA delivery in vitro and in vivo

Abstract

To fulfill the potential of small interference RNA (siRNA) therapeutics, diverse and efficient delivery platforms for siRNA are urgently needed. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are endogenous, cell secreted nano-vehicles which have been explored for functional siRNA delivery, yet impurities in EVs preparation and lack of efficient siRNA loading method have been limiting its further development into clinical applications. In this work, we have achieved high quality EVs production and an siRNA loading system via EVs. The prepared EV-siRNA system was able to deliver siRNA cargo to model cell lines to silence the expression of targeted genes with high potency. Furthermore, EV-siRNA administration in a tumor xenograft model significantly inhibited tumor growth. Therefore, this study establishes an innovative and efficient EV-siRNA platform for siRNA delivery in vitro and in vivo.