In June 2021, the research group of Prof. Sidong Xiong from the IBMS of Soochow University published the latest research entitled “Tagged extracellular vesicles with the RBD of the viral spike protein for delivery of antiviral agents against SARS-COV-2 infection” in the Journal of Controlled Release.
The worldwide spread of COVID-19 highlights the urgent need for an efficient approach to rapidly develop therapeutics and prophylactics against SARS-CoV-2. Extracellular vesicle(EVs) are recognized and endocytosed by tissue cells via specific interactions between surface membrane proteins, where after they deliver their molecular cargo. This provides the potential to modify membrane proteins at EV surfaces as a promising means for specific tissue targeting and drug delivery. In the present study, we exploited a pseudotyping-based approach to load EV membranes with SARS-CoV-2 spike protein RBD through engineering the VSVG. Using the pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 model, we demonstrate that the RBD-tagged EVs that encapsulate siRNAs against SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus can specifically target lung tissues and suppress the pseudovirus infection in vivo without immune stimulation. Importantly, our results showed RBD-tagged EVs would be able to specifically trend to multiple organs including heart and kidney, implying this specific targeting of EVs may as a promising vehicle to deliver antiviral agents for treatment of SARS-CoV-2-offensive multi-organ. Our work presents a safe and effective engineered EV system and may serve as a vehicle to deliver therapeutic antibodies or specific suppress drugs for treatment of SARS-CoV-2-offensive multi-organ.
Dr. Yuxuan Fu is the first author of this paper and Prof. Sidong Xiong is the corresponding author of this paper.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants [31670898, 31970844 and 31900679], the National Science and Technology Key Project (2018ZX10731301-004-003), Jiangsu Provincial Innovative Research Team Project, the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grants [2018M640521 and 2020T130090ZX].