Engineering of Extracellular Vesicles for Efficient Delivery of Prodigiosin

The therapeutic potential of prodigiosin as a hydrophobic anticancer agent can be enhanced by various approaches. One of which is the loading of PG into extracellular vesicles. Both, drug distribution and stability in aqueous media are important for targeting and accumulation, which, in turn, is important to achieve an effective drug concentration. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nano-sized, cell-derived vesicles with lipid bilayer membrane. EVs can be utilized as drug carriers for both water-soluble and non-water-soluble therapeutic agents. We hypothesized that EVs could effectively address the current challenges of prodigiosin delivery. Several different techniques have been developed for fabricating extracellular vesicles. These include EVs induction with cytochalasin B, prodigiosin and cultivation in serum depleted media (serum-free cultivation). Treatment with cytochalasin B has been shown to be effective for the generation of vesicles. Prodigiosin encapsulated extracellular vesicles (PG-EVs) compared to unmodified naïve ones demonstrated slightly higher charge and hydrodynamic dimensions. Which probably contributes to better stability. Overall, PG –EVs complexes might be more suitable for medical and clinical applications compared to pure forms of PG due to their cell membrane compatibility