review · Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology
Mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosomes present a promising cell-free therapeutic strategy for managing diverse inflammatory and degenerative conditions. Compared with whole mesenchymal stem cells, these exosomes provide notable advantages, including enhanced stability, long-term preservation capabilities, an absence of nuclei, and lower risks of adverse effects such as infusion toxicity. They carry a broad payload of biomolecules, including DNA, RNA, lipids, metabolites, and proteins, which facilitate both intercellular communication and targeted drug delivery. Through these components, the exosomes actively modulate immune responses, suppress harmful inflammation, and promote tissue repair. Their therapeutic relevance spans a wide variety of disorders, including arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, inflammatory eye diseases, asthma, acute respiratory distress syndrome, neurodegenerative disorders, and cardiac diseases. However, translating these vesicles into dependable therapeutic tools still faces notable challenges.
Treating severe inflammatory and degenerative diseases often involves therapies that cause adverse side effects or fail to restore damaged tissue. Exosomes derived from mesenchymal stem cells provide the regenerative and anti-inflammatory benefits of stem cell therapy without the risks and storage complications linked to living cells. This development could eventually lead to safer, more stable biological treatments for persistent conditions like arthritis and respiratory distress.
This technology could provide therapeutic developers and clinicians with cell-free biologics and drug delivery platforms for inflammatory, respiratory, cardiac, and neurodegenerative conditions. Because the abstract identifies ongoing challenges in establishing these exosomes as reliable therapeutic tools, the approach remains at an early to translational research stage rather than near-market readiness. Commercialisation would depend on resolving these functional and production challenges to enable standardised clinical applications.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles (MSC-EVs), especially, exosomes are considered to have diverse therapeutic effects for various significant diseases. MSC-derived exosomes (MSCex) offer substantial advantages over MSCs due to their long-term preservation, stability, absence of nuclei and fewer adverse effects such as infusion toxicity, thereby paving the way towards regenerative medicine and cell-free therapeutics. These exosomes harbor several cellular contents such as DNA, RNA, lipids, metabolites, and proteins, facilitating drug delivery and intercellular communication. MSCex have the ability to immunomodulate and trigger the anti-inflammatory process hence, playing a key role in alleviating inflammation and enhancing tissue regeneration. In this review, we addressed the anti-inflammatory effects of MSCex and the underlying immunomodulatory pathways. Moreover, we discussed the recent updates on MSCex in treating specific inflammatory diseases, including arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, inflammatory eye diseases, and respiratory diseases such as asthma and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), as well as neurodegenerative and cardiac diseases. Finally, we highlighted the challenges in using MSCex as the successful therapeutic tool and discussed future perspectives.
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DOI: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1563427
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