Targeted Delivery of Extracellular Vesicles, a Tool to Promote Remyelination

Demyelination in the central nervous system (CNS) can lead to devastating neurological disorders in patients with demyelinating neurological disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Krabbe disease. Developing a method to induce remyelination will help the CNS recover from damages caused by demyelination. The physiological remyelination that normally occurs in CNS is flawed in patients with MS. Our goal is to develop a method by which regulatory molecules can be delivered to cells that can contribute to remyelination. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are secreted by most cells and may serve as delivery vehicles for biological therapeutic molecules. We envision that therapeutic or regulatory molecules could then be delivered via EVs to cells involved in remyelination. We successfully modified EVs in order to enhance their cell selectivity in the central nervous system. We were able to track vesicles in vitro and confirm the introduced modifications via biochemical methods. In future steps, we intend to measure the efficacy of our modified EVs in binding and uptake by cells in the central nervous system in vitro as well as in vivo. Eventually, we plan to use this new tool to improve remyelination in demyelination mouse models.