Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 3 pp 4647—4662
Vascular endothelial cell-secreted exosomes facilitate osteoarthritis pathogenesis by promoting chondrocyte apoptosis
- 1 Department of Clinic of Spine Center, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200082, China
Received: September 21, 2020 Accepted: December 9, 2020 Published: February 1, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202506How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Exosomes are major mediators of cell-to-cell communication, and are involved in many physiological and pathological processes. Recently, the roles of exosomes in osteoarthritis (OA) and their therapeutic potential have received increasing attention. Exosomes derived from vascular endothelial cells have been confirmed to participate in the occurrence and development of numerous diseases; however, their effects in OA have not been reported. Here, we demonstrated the roles of exosomes secreted by vascular endothelial cells in the development of OA. Through in vivo and in vitro experiments, we demonstrated that exosomes derived from vascular endothelial cells decreased the ability of chondrocytes to resist oxidative stress by inhibiting autophagy and p21 expression, thereby increasing the cellular ROS content and inducing apoptosis. These findings indicate that exosomes derived from vascular endothelial cells promote the progression of OA, thus, providing new ideas for the diagnosis and treatment of OA.