The incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is increasing worldwide. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) contain sufficient bioactive substances and are carriers of intercellular information exchange, as well as delivery vehicles for nucleic acids, proteins and drugs. Although EVs show great potential for the treatment of HCC and their role in HCC progression has been extensively studied, there are still many challenges such as time-consuming extraction, difficult storage, easy contamination, and low drug loading rate. We focus on the biogenesis, morphological characteristics, isolation and extraction of EVs and their significance in the progression of HCC, tumor invasion, immune escape and cancer therapy for a review. EVs may be effective biomarkers for molecular diagnosis of HCC and new targets for tumor-targeted therapy.
Keywords: extracellular vesicles; hepatocellular carcinoma; hypoxia; tumor microenvironment; vesicle drug delivery.
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