Engineered multicompartment vesicosomes for selective uptake by living cells

Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) have attracted tremendous interest in recent years due to their exceptional properties for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Although much research was focused on the quantity and content of sEVs, less efforts have been put into discovering the interaction between sEVs and cells. Here we engineered multicompartment particles, termed vesicosomes, by deposition of sEVs derived from MCF7, CHO cells and human plasma onto the surface of polyelectrolyte (PE)-coated silica (SiO2) microparticles. Uptake of the PE-coated SiO2 microparticles by parent cells was significantly enhanced by coating them with sEVs, compared to PE-coated SiO2 microparticles independent of the terminated polyelectrolyte layer. This study highlights the emerging role of sEVs membrane receptors in the sEV-cells interaction and demonstrates the potential application of sEV-like multicompartment particles as therapeutic carriers.