Aims: The extracellular vesicle (EV) membrane is derived from its parent cell. How intact that inheritance is, and whether an EV lipidome is significantly different from unrelated cells and the lipid milieu of circulating plasma has not been subjected to quantitative investigation. We addressed three main questions: (1) whether HEK293T derived EVs share their lipid composition with their parental cell; (2) how varied is the HEK293T EV lipidome when compared to the healthy human plasma lipidome; and (3) whether EV lipidomes from different organs and cell lines (B16, E0771, MC38, etc.) differ from each other. Methods: We analyzed mass spectrometry based lipidomic data generated in house and curated from public repositories, including Metabolomics Workbench. Results: We found that the HEK293T EV lipidome was distinct from unrelated whole cell lipidomes and plasma, while remaining most similar to its parental cell. In HEK293T EVs, most of the detected EV lipids overlapped with HEK293T whole cell lipidome, with moderately conserved abundance patterns. EVs showed selective remodeling with enrichment in sphingomyelin, phosphatidylserine, and diacylglycerol with depletion of triglycerides, lysophosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylinositol. The comparison of EVs across nine different cell lines showed that the tissue of origin was the strongest driver of lipidomic variation in this panel. Conclusions: Within the HEK293T cell line, the EV lipidome reflects its parent cell but is further refined by selective lipid remodeling during EV generation. Because the direct parent cell comparison was limited to HEK293T, this relationship will require validation in additional matched cell and EV systems.
- Open Access
- Article
HEK293T Vesicle Lipidomes Retain Core Features of Their Parent Cells
- Kyle Peres,
- Krishna Kishor,
- Sanjoy K. Bhattacharya *
Author Information
Received: 21 Jul 2026 | Revised: 24 Aug 2026 | Accepted: 03 Sep 2026 | Published: 11 Sep 2026
Abstract
Keywords
lipidomics | exosomes | extracellular vesicles | membrane lipids | comparative lipidomics | mass spectrometry
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