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. 2023 Apr 1:558:216093.
doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2023.216093. Epub 2023 Feb 21.

Tumor-targeted exosomes for delivery of anticancer drugs

Rajeswari Raguraman  1 , Dhaval Bhavsar  1 , Dongin Kim  2 , Xiaoyu Ren  3 , Vassilios Sikavitsas  4 , Anupama Munshi  5 , Rajagopal Ramesh  6
Affiliations

Tumor-targeted exosomes for delivery of anticancer drugs

Rajeswari Raguraman et al. Cancer Lett. .

Abstract

Exosomes are small phospholipid bilayer vesicles that are naturally produced by all living cells, both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The exosomes due to their unique size, reduced immunogenicity, and their ability to mimic synthetic liposomes in carrying various anticancer drugs have been tested as drug delivery vehicles for cancer treatment. An added advantage of developing exosomes as a drug carrier is the ease of manipulating their intraluminal content and their surface modification to achieve tumor-targeted drug delivery. In the past ten-years, there has been an exponential increase in the number of exosome-related studies in cancer. Preclinical studies demonstrate exosomes-mediated delivery of chemotherapeutics, biologicals and natural products produce potent anticancer activity both, in vitro and in vivo. In contrast, the number of exosome-based clinical trials are few due to challenges in the manufacturing and scalability related to large-scale production of exosomes and their storage and stability. Herein, we discuss recent advances in exosome-based drug delivery for cancer treatment in preclinical and clinical studies and conclude with challenges to be overcome for translating a larger number of exosome-based therapies into the clinic.

Keywords: Drug delivery; Exosomes; Extracellular vesicles; Nanomedicine; Targeting.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Schematic depicting the various sources of exosomes used in developing and testing as drug delivery vehicle for cancer therapy in preclinical models with the goal of clinical translation.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Schematic representation of ASL functionalized exosomes loaded with doxorubicin for melanoma therapy. Image reproduced from Kang et al., [15]. ASL-Anchor (BODIPY)-Spacer(PEG)-targeting Ligands (cyclic RGD peptide)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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