How exosomes could become more than just an “anti-aging” fad

Exosomes may also be useful for drug treatment. After all, they are essentially small packets of proteins and other substances that can be moved between cells. Why not fill them with medicine and use them to target specific areas of the body?

Because exosomes are produced in our bodies, they are less likely to be perceived as “foreign” and rejected by our immune system. And the outer layer of the exosome may serve as a protective shell, protecting the drug from degradation until it reaches its destination, says James Edgar, who studies exosomes at the University of Cambridge. “This is a really attractive drug delivery method,” he says.

Dave Carter is one of the scientists working on this. Carter and his colleagues at Evox Therapeutics in Oxford, UK, are engineering cells to produce compounds that could help treat rare neurological diseases. These compounds can then be released from cells in exosomes.

In their research, Carter and his colleagues can change almost everything about the exosomes they study. They can modify their contents by loading them with proteins or viruses or even gene editing techniques. They can customize proteins on their surface to affect different cells and tissues. They can control how long the exosomes remain in the animal’s circulation.

“I’ve always loved playing with Lego,” he adds. “When I work with exosomes, it feels like I’m playing with Lego.”

Others hope that exosomes themselves have some therapeutic value. Some hope that exosomes derived from stem cells, for example, may have some regenerative ability.

Ke Cheng from Columbia University in New York became interested in the idea of ​​using exosomes to treat heart and lung diseases. Several preliminary studies suggest that exosomes from heart and stem cells may help animals such as mice and pigs recover from cardiac injury, such as that caused by a heart attack.

Of course, there are a lot of clinical trials going on with exosomes. When I searched for “exosomes” on clinicaltrials.gov, I got over 400 results. However, these are early studies and their quality varies.