Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Apr;40(4):909-915.
doi: 10.1007/s11095-022-03404-w. Epub 2022 Oct 5.

Review: Milk Small Extracellular Vesicles for Use in the Delivery of Therapeutics

Javaria Munir  1 , Alice Ngu  1 , Haichuan Wang  1 , Denise M O Ramirez  2   3 , Janos Zempleni  4
Affiliations
Review

Review: Milk Small Extracellular Vesicles for Use in the Delivery of Therapeutics

Javaria Munir et al. Pharm Res. 2023 Apr.

Abstract

Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs, "exosomes") in milk have attracted considerable attention for use in delivering therapeutics to diseased tissues because of the following qualities. The production of milk sEVs is scalable, e.g., more than 1021 sEVs may be obtained annually from a single cow. Milk EVs protect their cargo against degradation in the gastrointestinal tract and during industrial processing. Milk sEVs and their cargo are absorbed following oral administration and they cross barriers such as intestinal mucosa, placenta and the blood-brain barrier in humans, pigs, and mice. Milk sEVs do no alter variables of liver and kidney function, or hematology, and do not elicit immune responses in humans, rats, and mice. Protocols are available for loading milk sEVs with therapeutic cargo, and a cell line is available for assessing effects of milk sEV modifications on drug delivery. Future research will need to assess and optimize sEV shelf-life and storage and effects of milk sEV modifications on the delivery of therapeutic cargo to diseased tissues.

Keywords: drug delivery; exosomes; extracellular vesicles; milk.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Gyorgy B, Szabo TG, Pasztoi M, Pal Z, Misjak P, Aradi B, et al. Membrane vesicles, current state-of-the-art: emerging role of extracellular vesicles. Cell Mol Life Sci. 2011;68(16):2667–88. - PubMed - PMC - DOI
    1. O’Brien K, Breyne K, Ughetto S, Laurent LC, Breakefield XO. RNA delivery by extracellular vesicles in mammalian cells and its applications. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2020;21(10):585–606. - PubMed - PMC - DOI
    1. Rai A, Greening DW, Xu R, Chen M, Suwakulsiri W, Simpson RJ. Secreted midbody remnants are a class of extracellular vesicles molecularly distinct from exosomes and microparticles. Commun Biol. 2021;4(1):400. - PubMed - PMC - DOI
    1. Zhang H, Freitas D, Kim HS, Fabijanic K, Li Z, Chen H, et al. Identification of distinct nanoparticles and subsets of extracellular vesicles by asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation. Nat Cell Biol. 2018;20(3):332–43. - PubMed - PMC - DOI
    1. Gurung S, Perocheau D, Touramanidou L, Baruteau J. The exosome journey: from biogenesis to uptake and intracellular signalling. Cell Commun Signal. 2021;19(1):47. - PubMed - PMC - DOI

LinkOut - more resources