The Role and Effects of Fatty Acids on Astrocyte Derived Exosomes

Astrocytes maintain neurons throughout their life cycle making them important for neuron survival. Astrocytes, like all cell types contain a mode of cell to cell signaling to transfer RNA, lipid, proteins etc. The cell-to-cell signaling is called exosomes, these are biological nanoparticles which cells use to send information between each other. Exosomes are produced from the surface of the membrane, depending on the makeup of the bilayer can determine if exosomes production increases or decrease. Specifically, it’s been found that FAs are responsible for this as the more unsaturated the FAs are, the softer the membrane becomes allowing for more exosome budding. However, FAs cannot pass through the BBB easily, it needs to be phosphorylated for them to pass through. This thesis aims to address the problems stated above. The first being the poor ability for FAs to be transmitted across the BBB and their production change. Results demonstrated that exosomes could carry FAs and transmit them to other cell types. Furthermore, the results showed the ability to transfer anti-inflammatory markers between different cell types. In the future these preliminary results can be used to further investigate the capabilities of passing specific molecules to cells in hopes of creating a new drug delivery vehicle.