In the future, you could be your very own fountain of youth – or at least your own skin repair reservoir.
In the future, you could be your very own fountain of youth – or at least your own skin repair reservoir. In a proof-of-concept study, researchers from North Carolina State University have shown that exosomes harvested from human skin cells are more effective at repairing sun-damaged skin cells in mice than popular retinol or stem cell-based treatments currently in use. Additionally, the nanometer-sized exosomes can be delivered to the target cells via needle-free injections.
Exosomes are tiny sacs (30 – 150 nanometers across) that are excreted and taken up by cells. They can transfer DNA, RNA or proteins from cell to cell, affecting the function of the recipient cell. In the regenerative medicine field, exosomes are being tested as carriers of stem cell-based treatments for diseases ranging from heart disease to respiratory disorders.
“Think of an exosome as an envelope with instructions inside – like one cell mailing a letter to another cell and telling it what to do,” says Ke Cheng, professor of molecular biomedical sciences at NC State, professor in the NC State/UNC-Chapel Hill Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering and corresponding author of a paper describing the work. “In this case, the envelope contains microRNA, non-coding RNA that instructs the recipient cell to produce more collagen.”
To test whether exosomes could be effective for skin repair, Cheng and his team first grew and harvested exosomes from skin cells. They used commercially available human dermal fibroblast cells, expanding them in a suspension culture that allowed the cells to adhere to one another, forming spheroids. The spheroids then excreted exosomes into the media.
Read more at North Carolina State University
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