Biotechnological Implications of Extracellular Vesicles

The need for new biotechnological tools has forced researchers to explore other options that allow them to perform their processes effectively, and for that, the extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a promising option. Most organisms, including bacteria, produce the EVs, complying with various biological and environmental functions. Multiple technologies are used for isolation and characterization, but their technical requirement can restrict their use. As for biotechnological applications, these are very encouraging, however, to some extent, today only limited to specific cases. Studies focus mainly on biomedicine, including therapy against AIDS, oncology, diagnosis, and treatment of diverse pathologies, as well as genetic engineering. Also, EVs has been used in the cosmetics and food industry. In this chapter, we made a compendium of the current progress regarding the origin, functions, techniques of analysis, and biotechnological applications of the EVs.