Extracellular vesicles of the blood-brain barrier

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (ECV), like exosomes, gained recently a lot of attention as potentially playing a significant role in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly in Aβ pathology. While there are a lot of reports on ECV/exosomes derived from a variety of cell types, there is limited information on ECV/exosomes originated from brain microvascular endothelial cells forming the blood-brain barrier (BBB). In this review, we summarize the literature data on brain endothelial ECV/exosomes and present our own data on BBB-derived ECV and their possible involvement in the brain's Aβ pathology. We propose that ECV/exosome release from brain endothelial cells associated with Aβ affects different cells of the neurovascular unit and may be an important contributor to the Aβ deposition in the central nervous system.