Journal Article

Encapsulation and assessment of therapeutic cargo in engineered exosomes: a systematic review

Xiong, Min, Song, Dandan, Zhang, Lin, Chen, Zhen, Tian, Jiaqi, Duan, Shuyin

2024

Overview

Exosomes are nanoscale extracellular vesicles secreted by cells and enclosed by a lipid bilayer membrane containing various biologically active cargoes such as proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. Engineered exosomes generated through genetic modification of parent cells show promise as drug delivery vehicles, and they have been demonstrated to have great therapeutic potential for treating cancer, cardiovascular, neurological, and immune diseases, but systematic knowledge is lacking regarding optimization of drug loading and assessment of delivery efficacy. This review summarizes current approaches for engineering exosomes and evaluating their drug delivery effects, and current techniques for assessing exosome drug loading and release kinetics, cell targeting, biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, and therapeutic outcomes are critically examined. Additionally, this review synthesizes the latest applications of exosome engineering and drug delivery in clinical translation. The knowledge compiled in this review provides a framework for the rational design and rigorous assessment of exosomes as therapeutics. Continued advancement of robust characterization methods and reporting standards will accelerate the development of exosome engineering technologies and pave the way for clinical studies. Graphical Abstract

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Advanced Non-viral Delivery Systems in Tissue Engineering / Antibodies / Bioengineering / Biological activity / Biomedical engineering / Biotechnology / Cell culture / Cell organelles / Centrifuges / Chemical properties / Chemistry / Chemistry and Materials Science / Chromatography / Clinical translation / CRISPR / Drug delivery / Drug delivery systems / Drug Delivery Systems - methods / Drug encapsulation / Drugs / Efficacy assessment / Engineered exosomes / Engineering / Engineering research / Exosomes / Exosomes - metabolism / Extracellular vesicles / Extracellular Vesicles - metabolism / Genetic engineering / Genetic modification / Genetically modified organisms / Health aspects / Humans / Immunological diseases / Lipid bilayers / Lipids / Lung cancer / Medical research / Medicine, Experimental / Membrane lipids / Membranes / Methods / Molecular Medicine / Nanotechnology / Neoplasms - drug therapy / Neoplasms - metabolism / Nucleic acids / Pharmaceutical Preparations - metabolism / Pharmacokinetics / Proteins / Review / Reviews / Tissue Distribution / Toxicity / Vehicles