Newswise — Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have discovered a nanoparticle released from cells, called a “supermere,” which contains enzymes, proteins and RNA associated with multiple cancers, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and even COVID-19.
The discovery, reported Dec. 9 in Nature Cell Biology, is a significant advance in understanding the role extracellular vesicles and nanoparticles play in shuttling important chemical “messages” between cells, both in health and disease.
“We’ve identified a number of biomarkers and therapeutic targets in cancer and potentially in a number of other disease states that are cargo in these supermeres,” said the paper’s senior author, Robert Coffey, MD. “What is left to do now is to figure out how these things get released.”
Coffey, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research and professor of Medicine and…
