Comprehensive Review of Exosome Functions in Allergy & Hypersensitivity Describes Possible “Huge and Significant Advance with Profound Clinical Consequences”

There is a comprehensive and recently published review by Philip W. Askenase (photo), M.D., former Head of Allergy at the Yale School of Medicine, and his colleagues Krzysztof Bryniarski and Katarzyna Nazimek from the Department of Immunology, at the Jagiellonian University Medical College in Kraków, Poland. The authors highlight the ever-increasing number of biologic processes that have been revealed to involve the activity of the newly recognized set of subcellular, membrane-bound bodies known as extracellular vesicles (EVs), and including the EV subset known as exosomes---and focus on their roles in allergy and hypersensitivity. In the review, published online on November 8, 2016 in the International Archives of Allergy and Immunology, the authors note that EVs have been shown to transfer RNAs and proteins between different cells that can then participate in the complex pathogenesis of allergic and related hypersensitivity that is described in their article. The open-access article is titled “Functions of Exosomes and Microbial Extracellular Vesicles in Allergy and Contact and Delayed-Type Hypersensitivity.” In their concluding remarks, the authors write that “the pathogenesis of allergic and hypersensitivity responses relevant to human diseases appears to be significantly influenced by various exosome-dependent mechanisms. This principally involves the exchange of functional RNA between cells that are nearby or at a distance.” From this, the authors draw four major conclusions.