For the research, published in Nature Communications, the authors screened and characterised 244 potential scaffold proteins for their ability to enable robust drug sorting and loading into exosomes.
Of these, 24 proteins showed robust sorting ability across five different exosome-producing cell types with many of these scaffold proteins being reported for the first time.
Amongst the most potent are the novel tetraspanin scaffold proteins TSPAN2 and TSPAN3. These novel scaffolds were ‘extremely versatile’ and could be used to load a wide range of drug cargos either onto the surface or inside exosomes.
According to Evox, the research provides further evidence of the ‘underlying strength’ of its proprietary exosome engineering platform.
The Oxford-based biotech company has pioneered the use of proteins that are naturally highly expressed in exosomes to act as scaffolds for attaching and loading genetic medicines into exosomes. These new scaffold proteins have the potential to significantly enhance the quantity of drug cargoes, such as AAV and genome editing enzymes, that can be loaded inside exosomes.
Dr. Antonin de Fougerolles, CEO of Evox, said: “The discovery and characterisation of these novel scaffolds proprietary to Evox provides a new platform for exosome-based engineering and represents a 5-10-fold improvement over previously identified exosome scaffolds."
"This publication along with several more planned for later this year serve to highlight our world leading exosome engineering platform DeliverEX and the advances we are making in non-viral drug delivery of genetic medicines.”
