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

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

Because exosomes are produced in our body, our immune system is less likely to perceive them as “foreign” and reject them. And the outer layer of the exosome can act as a protective coating, protecting the drug from degradation until it reaches its destination, says James Edgar, who studies exosomes at the University of Cambridge. “It’s a really attractive way to deliver drugs,” 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 the cells in exosomes.

In their research, Carter and his colleagues can change almost everything in the exosomes they study. They can change their content by loading them with proteins or viruses or even gene editing techniques. They can tune the proteins on their surface to make them target different cells and tissues. They can control how long the exosomes stay in the animal’s bloodstream.

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

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

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

Of course, many clinical trials of exosomes are currently underway. When I searched for “exosomes” on Clinicaltrials.gov, I got over 400 results. However, these are early-stage trials — and they vary in quality.