Extracellular Vesicles / Exosomes
Loading a cargo into an exosome without damaging the vesicle is the central challenge you face in EV engineering. Lentiviral vectors express EV-enriched scaffold fusion proteins, packaging heterologous protein cargo into secreted EVs for your workflow. Dedicated XMIR and XMIRXpress vectors support loading of specific (anti)miRNA sequences without electroporation or sonication, which keeps your EVs intact. Surface display constructs present targeting peptides or full-length proteins on the exosome surface, using exosome-surface-localising scaffolds such as the C1C2 domain of MFG-E8 (XStamp tag). XMotif-tagged, chemically modified RNA backbone oligonucleotides load anti-miRNA payloads directly into exosomes from your producing cells.
This range spans more than 90 products, including anti-miRNA oligonucleotides against multiple targets, XPACK cargo-loading lentiviral vectors, and surface-display scaffolds, so you have room to match the approach to your experiment. There are also EV-Luminite NLuc bioluminescent reporters and related stable cell lines. These tools work with stably transduced producer cell lines or with your transient transfection workflows.
Cargo type. For protein cargo, use lentiviral expression vectors with XPack-style EV-enriched scaffold fusions. These package your tagged proteins into secreted EVs. For miRNA or anti-miRNA cargo, use XMIR, AXMIR or XMIRXpress vectors that incorporate an exosome-targeting RNA motif. For surface protein display, use transmembrane scaffold fusion constructs for receptor targeting or immune modulation.
Production method. For consistent lot-to-lot yield, use a stable cell line. Transduce with a lentiviral cargo-loading or surface-display vector, then select stable producers. For a transient study, transfect the expression plasmid and collect conditioned media EVs from your culture after 48 to 72 hours.
Tracking. To quantify EV secretion or measure recipient-cell uptake, use NLuc-CD9 bioluminescent reporter constructs. These give you a real-time luminescence readout on any plate luminometer.
Setup speed. For an immediate experiment, pre-built stable HEK293 reporter cell lines are ready to use for your timeline. For your own reporter cell line, transduce with the lentiviral vector and select under antibiotic pressure. This takes two to three weeks to establish.
Therapeutic cargo delivery
Anti-miRNA cargo silences oncogenic or neurodegeneration-linked miRNA targets in your recipient cells. miRNA profiling kits confirm knockdown after delivery.
Cell-targeted delivery
Surface-displayed peptides or antibody fragments direct EVs to tumour cells or neurons, raising in vivo selectivity. This builds on standard EV isolation tools.
Vector optimisation and EV tracking
NLuc-tetraspanin reporters give a real-time readout of EV secretion and uptake. Calibrate your luminescence readings against tetraspanin quantification assays.
Immune-cargo and antigen studies
Immunostimulatory or tolerogenic cargo in exosomes supports antigen-presentation research. Include producer-cell controls in comparative studies.
Product Catalog
Engineering Tools for Exosome Cargo Loading & Surface Display
There are several loading strategies. Passive incubation lets small hydrophobic molecules diffuse into membranes. Electroporation drives nucleic acids or proteins into vesicles under an electric field. Other methods include sonication or extrusion. Genetic engineering modifies the producing cell so it packages the cargo during EV biogenesis.
Genetic approaches using fusion proteins with EV-sorting domains, such as CD63 or PTGFRN, give the most reproducible endogenous loading.
Anti-miRNA oligonucleotides (AMOs or antagomirs) are chemically modified, single-stranded RNA or DNA sequences. They are complementary to a target miRNA. They inhibit miRNA function through competitive binding. This stops the miRNA from repressing its mRNA targets.
EV encapsulation protects AMOs from serum nuclease degradation. It can also improve cellular delivery compared with naked oligonucleotide transfection, particularly in hard-to-transfect primary cell types.
For protein or reporter cargo, run a Western blot of EV lysate. Use an antibody against the fusion tag or the cargo protein. This confirms loading. For nucleic acid cargo, treat intact EVs with RNase A first to degrade surface-associated RNA. Then run RT-qPCR on the EV-extracted RNA. This confirms the cargo sits inside the vesicle.
Luminescence measurement gives a relative readout of NLuc-reporter activity in EV preparations. Calibrate it against particle counts and tetraspanin ELISA or Western blot, and include producer-cell controls. Signal also reflects reporter abundance, substrate concentration, soluble background, and uptake or lysis efficiency, so calibration matters.
Several challenges affect scale-up. Lot-to-lot consistency in cargo loading efficiency can vary when you use stable producer lines. Surface targeting ligands need to keep their orientation during purification. Cargo-loaded EVs must retain their function after freezing and storage. Residual lentiviral vector needs removal from EV preparations used in any in vivo study.
Early use of NTA and ELISA-based release criteria helps you detect batch-to-batch variability before downstream studies.
Product catalogs
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