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Exosomes are responsible for intercellular communication and are widely valued in medicine and bioindustry. The team led by Dr. Ruey-Hwa Chen, a distinguished research fellow at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, has recently made a major breakthrough in the mechanism of exosome biogenesis. They discovered that cells contain two types of multivesicular bodies (MVBs), MVBs with PTPN23 are directed to lysosomes for degradation, while MVBs with ALIX are delivered to the cell membrane via actin cytoskeleton regulation for exosome secretion. The released exosomes are loaded with tumor-promoting proteins to enhance metastasis and tumor immune evasion. This study has broad impacts on boosting exosome production in bioindustry and devising cancer therapeutic strategy.

This study was published in Developmental Cell (IF: 10.7) on April 3, 2025. The first author is Nai Yang Yeat, a Ph.D. student in the Taiwan International Graduate Program in Chemical Biology and Molecular Biophysics. The research was supported by Academia Sinica Investigator Award.