Overview of extracellular vesicle biogenesis and related extracellular structures. (IMAGE)
Caption
Overview of extracellular vesicle biogenesis and related extracellular structures. Exosomes arise from the endosomal pathway through early endosome maturation, formation of ILVs and MVBs, and fusion of MVBs with the plasma membrane, whereas fusion with lysosomes leads to degradation. Autophagosomes/amphisomes can intersect with this pathway, and secretory autophagosomes provide an additional unconventional route for extracellular release through fusion with the plasma membrane. Ectosomes are generated by direct outward budding from the plasma membrane or membrane protrusions and include microvesicles and large oncosomes. Other extracellular structures shown include apoptotic bodies, blebbisomes, exophers, and migrasomes, which differ in origin, morphology, size, and cargo. Created in BioRender. Yanagawa, K. (2026) https://BioRender.com/ewmsz58. ILVs: intraluminal vesicles; MVBs: multivesicular bodies.
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© Norbert Perrimon, Kyosuke Yanagawa 2026. This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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