Exosomes derived from MSC as drug system in osteoarthritis therapy

Shuzhan Wen; Xin Huang; Jingchun Ma; Guanglei Zhao; Tiancong Ma; Kangming Chen; Gangyong Huang; Jie Chen; Jingsheng Shi; Siqun Wang

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2024.1331218

Exosomes derived from MSC as drug system in osteoarthritis therapy

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2024 Mar 20:12:1331218. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1331218. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Affiliation

¹ Department of Orthopedics, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common degenerative disease of the joint with irreversible cartilage damage as the main pathological feature. With the development of regenerative medicine, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been found to have strong therapeutic potential. However, intraarticular MSCs injection therapy is limited by economic costs and ethics. Exosomes derived from MSC (MSC-Exos), as the important intercellular communication mode of MSCs, contain nucleic acid, proteins, lipids, microRNAs, and other biologically active substances. With excellent editability and specificity, MSC-Exos function as a targeted delivery system for OA treatment, modulating immunity, inhibiting apoptosis, and promoting regeneration. This article reviews the mechanism of action of MSC-Exos in the treatment of osteoarthritis, the current research status of the preparation of MSC-Exos and its application of drug delivery in OA therapy.

Keywords: drug delivery; engineered exosome; exosome; mesenchymal stem cell; osteoarthritis.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The research was supported by funding from the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission’s General Project (21ZR1411000), and the corresponding author of this article is the project leader of the fund.