Abstract
Tumor-derived exosomes (TDES) play a vital role in facilitating cancer development and dissemination through the trafficking of oncogenic nucleic acids and proteins, such as cytokines and chemokines, which remodel the tumor microenvironment (TME) to facilitate malignant traits. This process ultimately contributes to tumorigenesis, invasion, metastasis, and treatment resistance. Therefore, restricting cancer-induced communication with healthy cells by eliminating TDEs may serve as a promising approach to curb cancer progression and dissemination. In this commentary, we discuss the pivotal role of tumor-derived exosomes (TDEs) in cancer progression and metastasis, and propose a novel therapeutic strategy: an anti-TDE vaccine. Building on our preliminary work, which showed that pantoprazole can inhibit tumor cell proliferation by disrupting TDE secretion and altering the surface charge of secreted TDEs, we elaborate on a duplex approach to engineer tumors to produce 'tagged' TDEs that are both poorly absorbed and targeted for immune clearance. This novel approach can overcome most of the challenges of pharmacological inhibition, including off-target effects, wide diversity of biogenesis pathways, and drug delivery and specificity.
Keywords
Tumor-derived exosomes (TDEs), Oncogenic communication, Targeting TDEs, Anti-TDE vaccine