Seminar

Extracellular vesicles, exosomes and mimetic technology

Prof. Yong Song Gho

Communication between cells and environment is an essential process in living organisms. The secretion of extracellular vesicles is a universal cellular process occurring from simple organisms to complex multicellular organisms, including humans. Throughout evolution, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells have adapted to manipulate extracellular vesicles for intercellular communication via outer membrane vesicles in the case of Gram-negative bacteria and ectosomes (also known as microvesicles) or exosomes in eukaryotic cells. Recent progress in this area has revealed that extracellular vesicles play multiple roles in intercellular and interspecies communication, suggesting that extracellular vesicles are NanoCosmos, i.e., extracellular organelles that play diverse roles in intercellular communication
(http://evpedia.info). This presentation focuses on the comprehensive aspects of mammalian and bacterial extracellular vesicles including components, biogenesis, and diverse functions that should facilitate further applications, especially to develop diagnostic tools, and therapeutics including our recent progress in bacterial extracellular vesicle-based cancer immunotherapy and novel exosome-mimetic technology for targeted delivery of chemotherapeutics and siRNA as well as for adjuvant-free, non-toxic vaccine delivery system against bacterial infection. Based on the concept of emergent properties of exosomes, future research directions to decode the complexity of intercellular communication network and the secret of life will be briefly introduced. Yong Song Gho is a full professor at the POSTECH, Pohang, South Korea. He got his Ph. D. from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. He has worked in the filed of ‘Extracellular Vesicles’ since year 2,000 and has about 80 extracellular vesicles-related publications and more than 30 registered patents. He was ‘Founding Board Members of ISEV and former ISEV ‘Executive Chair of Education’, and has served as ‘Editors-in-Chief of Journal of Extracellular Vesicles’ since 2012. His group ran EVpedia: community web-portal of extracellular vesicles research-more than 1.5 million accesses per month from world-wide researchers. Recently, he founded ‘Rosetta Exosome Co. Inc.’