2015/03/04

Ramón Areces Foundation funds research on therapeutic application of exosomes

- The study is coordinated by CIC bioGUNE researcher Juan Manuel Falcón-Pérez, an expert in exosome studies

- The Ramón Areces Foundation has granted 122,000 euros for this 3-year project.

(Bilbao, March 2015).- The field of health sciences is becoming increasingly interested in exosomes, which are vesicles secreted outside the cells that are involved in cell-to-cell communication. They are helping to identify noninvasive disease markers and may prove to be useful in the development of new therapeutic tools.

More funds are gradually being invested in research on exosome-based diagnosis methods for diseases like cancer, tuberculosis and neurodegenerative diseases. In this context, the Ramón Areces Foundation has granted a research project to CIC bioGUNE researcher Juan Manuel Falcón-Pérez, which will focus on discovering more about exosome mechanisms of action in cells that receive the information they carry, the identification of their biogenesis processes, and their possibilities in therapeutics.

The name of the project is "A study of the biogenesis and tissue distribution of exosomes to develop new therapeutic agents" and aims to develop a methodology to manipulate exosomes in order to add clinically relevant functions.

In this sense, Falcón-Pérez has been focusing his scientific work on exosomes for years. He recently published a paper in Nature Communications on the role of exosomes in tissue and organ formation.

"The goal of this new project is to develop a different aspect relating to the clinical application of exosomes. The project will study the fundamentals to develop therapeutic agents from exosomes," explains the researcher.

Falcón-Pérez points out that one of the project's main goals is to define exosome specificity through different tissues, with the aim of transporting substances and activities to certain organs, without damaging others.

In order to conduct this research, this new project will use cell cultures from mammals and from Drosophila, the so-called fruit fly, which will help to offer a global view of the behaviour of exosomes in an organism.

Another important part of the study is the analysis of possible side effects of the use of exosomes as therapeutic agents. The researchers also hope to analyse the effect of exosomes on different metabolic pathways in target cells.

With this project, the scientists are looking to find an answer to the impact of exosome manipulation and to the effects of using them to design therapeutic tools.

It is a multi-disciplinary project and is being carried out in collaboration with Isabel Guerrero, scientist at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre, and Niels Reichardt, researcher at CIC biomaGUNE.

The project lasts three years and is funded by the Ramón Areces Foundation's Life and Matter Sciences Research Project grants. These funds aim to promote scientific research in areas of interest to society.

The Ramón Areces Foundation is a private institution established in 1976 to promote patronage in science, research, human capital training and knowledge dissemination.

About CIC bioGUNE

The Centre for Cooperative Research in Biosciences CIC bioGUNE, with headquarters in the Bizkaia Science and Technology Park, is a biomedical research organisation that conducts innovative research in the interface between structural, molecular and cell biology, focusing especially on the study of the molecular bases of disease, to be used in the development of new diagnostic methods and advanced therapies.