Endocrine Abstracts

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) constitute a novel biological entity to identify biomarkers, and as active players in the development of liver diseases. Omics technologies have been widely applied to characterize the content and function of EVs secreted by liver cells in different pathological scenarios including drug-induced liver injury (DILI), NAFLD and metabolic syndrome. Thus, transcriptomics and proteomics of these EVs have provided several low invasive candidate biomarkers for cirrhosis in serum and urine. The transcriptomic analysis of EVs and the cells that secrete those EVs made possible the identification of a sorting RNA signal that can incorporate the RNAs into the EVs to be exported out of the cells. Another important contribution of the omics technologies to the hepatic EVs, in this case done by metabolomics has been the demonstration that hepatic EVs carry several active enzymes that are able to modify the serum metabolic composition what could have important implications for endothelial functioning. The integration of several omics technologies combined by using different experimental settings including the analysis of the cells, the EVs secreted by those cells, and the cells exposed to those EVs allow to dissect the EVs-mediated mechanisms underlying the development and progression of liver diseases and it provides novel therapeutics targets.