Exosomes based advancements for application in medical aesthetics

Abstract

Beauty is an eternal pursuit of all people. Wound repair, anti-aging, inhibiting hyperpigmentation and hair loss are the main demands for medical aesthetics. At present, the repair and remodeling of human body shape and function in medical aesthetics are often achieved by injection of antioxidants, hyaluronic acid and botulinum toxin, stem cell therapy. However, there are some challenges, such as difficulty controlling the injection dose, abnormal local contour, increased foreign body sensation, and the risk of tumor occurrence and deformity induced by stem cell therapy. Exosomes are tiny vesicles secreted by cells, which are rich in proteins, nucleic acids and other bioactive molecules. They have the characteristics of low immunogenicity and strong tissue penetration, making them ideal for applications in medical aesthetics. However, their low yield, strong heterogeneity, and long-term preservation still hinder their application in medical aesthetics. In this review, we summarize the mechanism of action, administration methods, engineered production and preservation technologies for exosomes in medical aesthetics in recent years to further promote their research and industrialization in the field of medical aesthetics.

Keywords: engineering production; exosomes; medical aesthetics; preserve; separate.

FIGURE 1

Overview of the composition of exosomes and the role of exosomes in medical aesthetics.

FIGURE 2

The established theory of exosomes biogenesis indicates different pathways distinguished as ESCRT-dependent and ESCRT-independent (Shi et al., 2021).

FIGURE 3

Utlization of MSCs derived exosomes for wound healing. (A) Depicts the light field photographs of cutaneous wounds post treatment with PBS, BMMSCs, BMMSC-ex, and BM/siRab27a. (B) Percentage of the wound closure on day 3–day 12 in reference to the day 0 wounds (n = 4). (C) qRT-PCR analysis of IL-10 and TNF-α in macrophages after being cocultured with BMMSC-, BMMSC/siRab27a-, or BMMSC-derived exosomes (n = 3). (D) qRT-PCR analysis of miR-223 in macrophages cocultured with BMMSCs, BMMSC-ex, and BM/siRab27a (He et al., 2019).

FIGURE 4

Exosomes can accelerate tissue remodeling. (A) General view of wounds treated with PBS or EPC exosomes of different concentrations on the 4th, 7th, and 14th days after trauma. (B) The rate of wound-closure on different days in wounds receiving different treatments. (C) On the 14th day after trauma, the wounds were treated with PBS or EPC exosomes of different concentrations and then stained with H&E (Zhang J. et al., 2016). (D) Representative photographs showing the effect of conditioned medium from days 0 to 6 on the transwell migration and tubule formation of HMEC-1 (Tao et al., 2017). (E, F) Control cells and 200 μg/ml wheat exosome (WE)–treated cells were incubated (37°C, 5% CO₂) in DMEM medium supplemented with 10% FBS. Average number of branches formed by both control and treated cells (Sahin et al., 2019).

FIGURE 5

Exosomes inhibits the formation of scar by inhibiting the excessive proliferation of tissues. (A) Representative images of immunohistochemical staining of PCNA and β-catenin in each group. Scale bar = 100 μm (Zhang B. et al., 2016). (B, C) Effect of miR-29a-modified hADSCs-exo on the scratch healing of HSFBs. (D, E) Effect of miR-29a overexpression and knockdown on the expression level of TGF-β2 in HSFBs (Yuan et al., 2021).

FIGURE 6

Exosomes delay cell senescence. (A) Schematic of the preparation of extracellular vesicles (EVs), and cell-engineered nanovesicles (CENVs) from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). (B, C) Comparison of human iPSC-derived CENV and EV (Lee H. et al., 2020). (D) Mechanism Diagram of eNAMPT Containing Extracellular Vesicles Delaying Cell Aging. (E) Fluorescent images of primary hypothalamic neurons following the incubation with BODIPY-labeled EVs. (F) Kaplan-Meier curves and representative images of aged female mice injected with vehicle or EVs isolated from 4- to 12-month-old mice (n = 11–12). The mouse images were taken after 3 months of treatment (Yoshida et al., 2019).

FIGURE 7

The mechanism for exosome regulation of MMPs. (A) Western blot of dorsal skin of different groups. (B) Masson’s Trichrome staining and Corresponding H & E staining. scale bar: 290 μm (Hu et al., 2019). (C) The mRNA expression levels of MMP-1, MMP-3 and collagen type I were quantified by quantitative real-time RT-PCR (Oh et al., 2018). (D, E) The proliferation of HDFs in different groups was measured by CCK-8 method. Gene expression in HDFs with or without HASC-derived EVs treatment after UV irradiation (Choi et al., 2019).

FIGURE 8

Exosomes inhibit melanin production. (A–C) Western blot was used to analyze the expression of related proteins. Melanin content in cells under different conditions.Western blot analysis of protein expression levels of tyrosinase, TRP1, p-ERK1/2 and ERK1/2 in cells. (D–F) Western blot analysis was used to detect the level of MITF under different conditions (Kim et al., 2015). (G, H) Melanin content of UV irradiated cells under different conditions (Han et al., 2022).

FIGURE 9

Hair regeneration induced by exosomes. (A, B) Take skin photos on days 0, 4, 11, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 28. Then, the hair regeneration area quantized by imageJ software is expressed in percentage (Rajendran et al., 2017). (C, D) Representative photos of mice showing skin color darkness and hair regrowth at 0, 7, 10 and 14 days post-injection. The level of pigmentation was quantified by the intensity of the darkness of the back skin in the same area. (E) Immunofluore-scent images show that GFP-ApoEV (green) were engulfed by skin MSCs (SMSCs) (1 and 2), as indicated by co-staining with CD105 at 7 days post-injection. (F) Western blotting shows Wnt/β-catenin signaling is activated and DKK1 expression is decreased in SMSCs and hair follicle MSCs (HF-MSCs) from MRL/lpr mice after apoEVs injection (Ma et al., 2023).

FIGURE 10

Exosomes separation device. (A, B) A photograph of the EXODUS station and Schematic diagram of the control module for the resonator (Chen et al., 2021). (C, D) Separation of exosomes by tangential flow filtration. Exosomes were enriched from the culture supernatant by tangential flow filtration with a 500 kDa cut-off filter cartridge (Haraszti et al., 2018).