Abstract
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane enveloped particles released from cells to the extracellular environment and body fluids. During their biosynthesis, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, metabolites and other molecules of the EV producing cell are incorporated into EVs.
EVs are able to transfer such molecular cargo to recipient cells and thus participate in intercellular communication. In this chapter, we review the current knowledge about EVs in a rare hereditary neurodegenerative disorder, Huntington's disease (HD), which is caused by expanded polyglutamine sequence in protein huntingtin.
The roles of EVs in HD are presented from several aspects, including the roles of EVs in disease pathogenesis and transfer of mutant huntingtin, EV importance in the search of HD biomarkers with a special focus on proteins and miRNAs, and experimental therapeutic applications of astrocyte- and stem cell-derived EVs as well as engineered EVs in HD.