Extracellular vesicles in the tumour microenvironment

Cancer is a devastating disease that touches the lives of millions of people around the world. After many years of work by thousands of scientists and clinicians around the globe, the overall survival of people who acquire certain types of cancer has been dramatically improved. However, the overall survival rates for some forms of cancer remain stubbornly low. It is, therefore, imperative to devise novel avenues of study to stimulate new opportunities for drug development, and identification of new tools for early diagnosis and disease monitoring. One such emerging area of intensive research is the concept of the tumour microenvironment. Cancer cells do not grow as a homogeneous mass, existing in isolation from other cell types, but rather in collaboration with other cells in the environment of the tumour. These stromal cells, which under normal conditions support the function of healthy …