Modeling Biological Receivers: The Case of Extracellular Vesicle Fusion to the Plasma Membrane of the Target Cell

A continuously increasing number of biomedical applications exploits the exchange of extracellular vesicles (EVs) between biological cells to develop innovative and more efficient therapeutic protocols. The challenge is to provide alternative strategies to existing low-success drug delivery technologies, for the treatment of particular diseases. An interesting contribution in this direction is provided by interdisciplinary and non-conventional approaches, interpreting biological cells as transmitting and receiving devices that communicate through extracellular vesicles, among other chemical signals. This paper addresses the processes and functionalities of the cells as receiving devices, with particular focus on the EV internalization through their fusion with the plasma membrane of the target cells. In fact, poor information is currently available regarding such processes which makes it impossible to fully exploit the potentiality of EV-based therapeutic protocols. Therefore, with aim of retrieving such a deficiency of information a mathematical methodology is derived to supply an analytical model, representing a first crucial step towards a more general and comprehensive contribution to the study of EVs communication.