Exosomes in Gastric Cancer: Roles, Mechanisms, and Applications

Overview

Journal Mol Cancer

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialties Molecular Biology
Oncology

Date 2019 Mar 17

PMID 30876419

Citations 119

Authors

Min Fu

Jianmei Gu

Pengcheng Jiang

Hui Qian

Wenrong Xu

Xu Zhang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Exosomes are nanosized extracellular vesicles that can be released by almost all types of cells. Initially considered as the garbage bins acting to discard unwanted products of cells, exosomes are now recognized as an important way for cellular communication by transmitting bioactive molecules including proteins, DNA, mRNAs, and non-coding RNAs. The recent studies have shown that exosomes are critically involved in human health and diseases including cancer. Exosomes have been suggested to participate in the promotion of tumorigenesis, tumor growth and metastasis, tumor angiogenesis, tumor immune escape, and tumor therapy resistance. Increasing evidence indicate that exosomes play important roles in gastric cancer development and progression. In this review, we summarized the current understanding of exosomes in gastric cancer with an emphasis on the biological roles of exosomes in gastric cancer and their potential as biomarkers for gastric cancer diagnosis as well as potential targets for gastric cancer therapy.

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