Vesicles are a kind of intercellular transport, with the help of which you can quickly and accurately diagnose cancer at an early stage, and also deliver drugs directly to the malignant tumor. This is a technology of the very near future.
A team of scientists from the National Medical Research Center of Oncology named after. N.N. Petrova improved methods for isolating vesicles from the body, coming up with several unique technologies. The research work is led by Anastasia Valerievna Malek, head of the scientific laboratory of subcellular technologies with a group of oncoendocrinology, oncologist, doctor of medical sciences.
Causes
The watery liquid inside the blister is called serum. It leaks from nearby tissues as a reaction to skin trauma. If the blister remains closed, the serum can provide natural protection to the surface underneath. Small blisters are called vesicles. Vesiculitis begins to develop when fluid gets under the top layer of skin, called the epidermis. A number of different diseases cause this. Some of the conditions for the appearance of a neoplasm are minor - in this case, you do not need to consult a doctor. Others are more serious and may signal a complex medical problem that requires long-term treatment. Minor causes of vesicles include allergic reactions to substances that cause skin irritation, dermatitis, eczema, and herpes. But you should see a doctor if the blistering vesicles are the result of an autoimmune disorder, chickenpox, shingles, skin conditions that cause blisters, or skin conditions caused by streptococcal or staph infections.
Functions of vesicles
As seen in the different types of vesicles, they can participate in buoyancy and optimize photosynthesis (gas vesicles), intercellular signaling and metabolism (exosomes), intracellular digestion (lysosomes), transport and secretion (vesicles arising from the Golgi network). It can transport cargo of any type, from large apoptotic vesicles and pathogens to biopolymers as well as waste. They are essential for the formation and maintenance of the plasma membrane, extracellular matrix, and internal cytoplasmic structure. Vesicles are also critical to the functioning of cells involved in extracellular digestion, such as those lining digestive organs such as the salivary glands. Finally, the body maintains homeostasis by coordinating the actions of various organs through its nervous and endocrine systems. Both of these organ systems require the proper functioning of the vesicular network to perform their tasks.
- apoptosis – The controlled, programmed death of cells that is a normal part of the body's growth and maturation.
- Antigen presentation – The process by which cells of the immune system capture antigens and present them to T cells, allowing the body to distinguish between pathogens and its own cells.
- Endocytosis – Massive uptake of material by a cell through invagination of the plasma membrane.
- exocytosis – The release of large amounts of material from a cell when a vacuole or vesicle fuses with the plasma membrane.
What are the symptoms of vesiculitis?
There are many causes of blisters, including irritation from friction, exposure to irritating chemicals, and extreme cold or heat. Blisters on your feet can be caused by shoes that cause chafing in one specific area. Any type of burn, including sunburn, can also cause vesicles. Typically, blisters are round or oval-shaped, bubbles of fluid under the skin that may be painful, red, itchy, or cause no symptoms at all. A vesicle is a skin reaction that is fairly easy to recognize. As a rule, it does not appear alone, but in the form of a whole scattering of liquid-filled bubbles developing on the surface of the skin. The space around the vesicles also contains fluid. Most vesicles rupture easily. When this happens, the liquid comes out. After drying, the area of the blister turns yellow or crusts over. If this phenomenon is not preceded by a serious illness, then such a vesicle heals quite quickly.
Diagnostics
You should definitely consult a doctor if you find unexplained vesicles on your skin. A doctor (usually a dermatologist) will check the condition of your skin and can immediately diagnose the cause of the unwanted blisters based on the information received. If your doctor is not sure of the accuracy of the diagnosis, he may recommend taking tests and doing a series of tests. The doctor may take a sample of the fluid or a biopsy of skin tissue from the blisters to send to the laboratory. Analysis of the sample will help to definitively confirm the diagnosis.
Our information
How vesicles are isolated from the human body Researchers, drawing on fundamental knowledge in the fields of physics, biology and chemistry, have suggested that vesicles can be isolated by creating a so-called two-phase polymer system. If you mix two polymers in a liquid, then at certain ratios of their molecular weights and concentrations, the solution will separate into two phases: upper and lower. This phenomenon has been known for a long time, but to solve the problem of isolating nanovesicles it was used only twice: by groups of Korean and Turkish researchers. Scientists from the National Medical Research Center of Oncology named after. Petrova improved this technology and selected the optimal ratio of molecular weights and concentrations of two polymers. Two polymers are dissolved in a test tube with blood plasma; as a result, the total solution is divided into two phases. Nanovesicles are concentrated in the lower phase, and the remaining plasma components are concentrated in the upper phase. This isolation method is quite fast and effective; even 1.5 ml of plasma can be used for analysis. And in a day in the laboratory you can isolate vesicles from 100 samples
What kind of neoplasm is a vesicle? How to treat vesiculitis?
Treatment for vesicles depends on the cause of their appearance. If it was an allergic reaction, you can take antihistamines; no special treatment is required, however, you should consult a doctor if the vesicles are the cause of more serious health problems or if the cause is unknown. Sometimes watery blisters on the skin can be accompanied by other serious symptoms such as inflammation or infection.
In this case, only a doctor can prescribe medications. For example, bullous pemphigoid is a type of autoimmune disorder that occurs most often in older people. In this case, corticosteroids are taken to reduce inflammation and antibiotics to prevent infection. You should not self-medicate, cauterize or squeeze out vesicles, as this can only harm yourself. It's best to talk to your doctor about acceptable treatment options to reduce your symptoms.
Typically, complex therapy is aimed at strengthening the immune system and includes vitamins, microelements, and immunomodulators. Depending on the pathogenic agent that caused the vesiculitis, various groups of antibacterial drugs are used: “Summamed”, “Oletetrin”, “Doxycycline”. For specific infections, drugs of the penicillin and tetracycline series are used, used according to the prescribed regimen. Anti-inflammatory medications are used as an auxiliary treatment: Diclofenac, Indomethacin.
You can get rid of unpleasant blisters at home using special antibacterial ointments, or less commonly, tablets or injections. It is possible to use a folk arsenal of remedies: various decoctions, infusions, baths using nettle, fennel, burdock root, chamomile, St. John's wort and other medicinal herbs.
At elevated temperatures, you should take an antipyretic drug (Ibuprofen, Nimid). It happens that vesicles can develop into an abscess or phlegmon - then surgical intervention is necessary.
Letter with return address
— Thanks to vesicle isolation technology, is it enough to take blood from a vein to detect cancer cells in the human body?
- Yes. This method is much more informative than the analysis of molecular components of plasma, or so-called tumor markers, to which there are many complaints. They are used and they are popular simply because there is nothing else.
— Why then are tumor markers needed if their informativeness is in question? Do they have any practical meaning at all?
- For now. There are diagnostic tumor markers when they indicate, with varying degrees of probability, the presence of some disease. For example, PSA (prostate-specific antigen), which can respond to various changes in the prostate gland, does not necessarily have to be prostate cancer. There are more specific markers - fragments of mutated genes, but there is another problem: you need to know what mutation to look for, which is rarely possible.
— Why are vesicles better than the molecules on which tumor markers work?
— The molecules in the blood can be compared to a set of letters. Combinations of molecules are words. And vesicles are ready-made small text. Some kind of letter, with a return address. These “letters” contain a lot of information - you just need to be able to read it, and the specificity of vesicle analysis methods is much higher than the specificity of traditional tumor markers.
— If the vesicles show that something, let’s say atypical, is happening in a particular tissue, is this a clear sign of the onset of a tumor process? Or might there still be options?
- Nobody can say for sure yet. And then, this is a dynamic process - some tumors appear, but do not grow. The immune system copes on its own. But the possibility of using such a “red flag” is important; it can signal where the process of abnormal proliferation, possibly neoplastic, has begun.
What are the forecasts?
Is the vesicle forever or can it be considered a temporary phenomenon? It all depends on the root cause. If the blisters were caused by contact dermatitis or as an allergic reaction, complete recovery is generally observed over time. In more serious cases, the blisters may be due to genetics or a viral infection and appear and disappear periodically throughout life. Proper treatment can relieve symptoms of the disease. However, if the formation of vesicles is caused by a chronic disease, then the possibility cannot be ruled out that similar watery rashes will not appear again.
World class discovery
— Has anyone else in the world achieved similar results?
“I have not seen any scientific work showing that during the development of cancer, vesicles from normal epithelium appeared. But similar studies are, of course, underway. There are, for example, studies that have shown that melanin-containing vesicles become larger when melanoma develops. But this is, in principle, logical. In Pittsburgh, America, there is a strong clinical group, but they mainly work with hematology patients.
— When all stages of your vesicle research are completed, what benefit will this bring to a particular patient?
— The ending of “all stages” sounds somehow tragic, I think that this is a long progressive process. For now, I can guess what the first results will be? We work in two directions: diagnostics and therapy.
In the first case, we are trying to create a method for assessing the ratio in plasma of vesicles secreted by different epithelial tissues. Such an analysis will be the basis for screening technology for the most significant cancer diseases. This analysis will be fast and cheap. If deviations are detected - an increase in the concentration of a separate vesicular fraction - it can be isolated and analyzed. Such an analysis will be the second diagnostic stage. These tests should be much more effective than traditional molecular tumor markers, but more accessible than instrumental diagnostic methods. They should occupy a certain niche and increase the rates of early diagnosis of cancer.
As part of the development of “vesicular” therapeutic approaches, we are working on developing a method for isolating vesicles from plasma during a plasmapheresis procedure. No one has done this yet, so the physiological effects of changing the composition of plasma vesicles will need to be carefully studied. The results of some studies suggest that in cancer patients such a procedure will potentiate the effect of standard systemic therapies. But the most “exciting” idea is the idea of modifying isolated vesicles and using them as an autologous system for “targeted” drug delivery to tumor cells.
These are all relatively distant prospects. But they need to be seen in order to solve small tactical problems.
Vesicle as a component of the cell
It is noteworthy that there is such a thing as a cell vesicle. It is a small membranous region that separates organic materials from the rest of the cytoplasm and is responsible for transporting these substances to various parts of the cell. The life of a vesicle does not last long - it is formed and processed as needed. Cellular vesicles are used to transport chemicals to places where they may be needed. These organelles also serve as a kind of packaging for the Golgi complex, including enzymes, peptide hormones and plasma proteins. The entire contents of the vesicles are surrounded by a membrane. But let's return directly to vesiculitis.
"Self-portrait" of a cell
— What are vesicles? We are accustomed to thinking that a person consists of cells and molecules, which carry the most important information about the structure of the body.
— There are cells, and there is an intercellular space containing a wide range of organic molecules and ions. Therefore, everyone is accustomed to two levels of tissue organization: cellular and molecular. And there is something else in between. At the same time, very informative. Vesicles are bubbles with a diameter of 80-150 nanometers that are produced by all cells of the body. They circulate in all biological fluids of the body - blood, saliva, cerebrospinal fluid, etc. These vesicles transfer signaling or structural molecules between cells of anatomically distant tissues and thus influence the biology and vital activity of recipient cells, being an integration system for a multicellular organism.
The first mentions of vesicles appeared in the 50-60s of the last century. But until visualization methods were developed, no one saw them. As soon as the vesicles were visualized thanks to the equipment that appeared, scientists were delighted and rushed to study them.
— Can’t you see the vesicles under a microscope?
“That’s the point: they are not visible in light microscopy. The resolution is lacking by a couple of orders of magnitude. Methods based on the reflection of laser light from an object in a state of Brownian motion work here.
— What allows you to see the laser beam reflected from the vesicle?
“We must understand that this is not a real reflection of vesicles, but some kind of simulated picture. The main thing we need to do with this “model” image is to estimate the sizes of the objects and count them. About ten trillion vesicles can be isolated from a milliliter of human plasma. Having counted them, we can already work with them. What is the value of vesicles? This is a valuable biochemical composition created by nature; the chemical composition of the vesicle is similar to a cell, since it is a product of cell secretion. Each vesicle is a unique composition, characteristic of the “author” cell. A kind of “self-portrait” of the cell. By knowing tissue-specific markers, we can isolate vesicles originating from specific cells. By analyzing the vesicles, we understand in which cells the disease develops. Even quantitative analysis can be informative.
It is clear that there are a lot of vesicles circulating in the blood, but 95-97 percent of them are diagnostically uninteresting. This is all the background formed by the cells of the vascular walls and blood. All other tissues of the body also “sprinkle” their vesicles, it is clear that in smaller quantities and in proportion to the secretory activity of the tissue and size. For example, plasma contains many vesicles from muscle tissue, and much less vesicles from the prostate gland. And here we have an interesting theory. All epithelial tumors develop from epithelium, for example, stomach cancer is formed from the intestinal epithelium, lung cancer from the epithelium of bronchioles, and so on. Accordingly, when an oncological disease develops, the tumor cells for the most part retain the characteristics of the original tissue - and if suddenly there is an abnormal amount of this tissue in the body, then the proportion of those vesicles that have the corresponding tissue markers increases.
We tested this theory in two sites: thyroid nodules and colon cancer. For example, we assessed the number of vesicles that have markers of intestinal differentiation, in other words, intestinal vesicles. And it turned out that patients with colon cancer have more of them, while healthy people have less. This means that we don’t need to know any magic tumor markers. You just need to know the characteristics of the vesicles secreted by different types of epithelial cells and know the normal distribution of such vesicles in the plasma. When we can evaluate deviations from the normal distribution, we will be able to guess in which tissues active cell proliferation occurs, and possibly a tumor develops.
— That is, it is necessary to collect a “database” for all organs and determine for each its own “norm” of vesicles?
— Ideally, if you approach this issue fundamentally, then, of course, yes. I have never seen such works anywhere, I suspect that they simply do not exist.
— What needs to be done to collect all the data on all vesicles in the human body?
“This is a difficult job, because first of all we need to determine markers for each epithelium and test hundreds of samples. This approach requires a global, calm, long-term study. Big finances and many hands.
Prevention measures
In some cases, preventing bubbles from appearing is not possible. If you know you have allergies, you can help prevent the development of vesicles by avoiding contact with allergens. A good recommendation would be to practice good personal hygiene - for example, don't share your cup, drink from the same straw, or share lip product with another person. Unfortunately, most known skin diseases are contagious and can be transmitted through airborne droplets. To prevent calluses, wear comfortable, well-fitting shoes and use sunscreen before exposure to the sun to protect your skin from sunburn.
During the cold season, it is necessary to wear mittens, hats and thick socks to protect the skin from frost and piercing wind. Avoid irritants and allergens that trigger eczema, such as certain hygiene products (bubble baths, detergents), specific metals in jewelry (especially nickel), and irritating plants such as poison ivy. To prevent blisters caused by infections, it is recommended to wash your hands frequently and not touch skin sores, cuts or any open wounds on other people. It is important to remember that the fewer sexual partners a person has, the lower the risk of herpes and other unpleasant diseases. To avoid the spread of infections, you need to try to protect children from sharing toys and utensils with other people's offspring. Be careful and love yourself!
