Hacking Extracellular Vesicles: Using Vesicle-Related Tags to Engineer Mesenchymal Stromal Cell-Derived Extracellular Vesicles

Background/Objectives: Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) have shown great promise as diagnostic and therapeutic tools, as well as pharmacological nanocarriers. Various strategies are being explored to develop EVs for monitoring, imaging, loading with pharmacological agents, and surface decoration with tissue-specific ligands. EVs derived from Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSC-EVs) are of particular interest both as therapeutics per se and as natural nanocarriers for the targeted delivery of biotherapeutics. Methods: In this study, we investigated the ability of different tags to deliver a reporter protein into canine MSC-EVs with the aim of identifying the most effective endogenous loading mechanism. To this aim, canine MSCs were engineered to express the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) fused to CD63, Syntenin-1, TSG101, and the palmitoylation signal of Lck, which were expected to promote GFP incorporation into EVs. Overexpression of tagged GFP in canine MSCs was confirmed by Western blotting and examined by confocal microscopy and transmission electron microscopy to map intracellular localization. Results: All tags were able to deliver GFP into EVs. Syntenin-1 showed relatively high loading efficiency and secretion index but exhibited a diffuse localization pattern in the transfected cells. The palmitoylation signal showed low loading efficiency and localization specificity. TSG101 displayed a morphological pattern consistent with specific localization in endosomal structures, but its low expression level prevented further evaluations. Finally, CD63 showed the highest expression efficiency, as GFP-CD63 levels were approximately 5-fold higher than untagged GFP. Conclusions: In conclusion, CD63 emerged as the most suitable tag for canine MSC-EV engineering. Indeed, even if the secretion index favours Syntenin-1, CD63’s higher abundance in the lysate suggests its substantial post-secretion uptake. Further studies aimed at elucidating CD63’s specific contribution and identifying the domains involved in vesicle trafficking could provide valuable insights into EV bioengineering.