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Review
. 2023 Aug;60(8):4659-4678.
doi: 10.1007/s12035-023-03365-0. Epub 2023 May 3.

Exosomes: Promising Delivery Tools for Overcoming Blood-Brain Barrier and Glioblastoma Therapy

Seyyed Hossein Khatami  1 , Neda Karami  2 , Mortaza Taheri-Anganeh  3 , Sina Taghvimi  4 , Gholamhossein Tondro  5 , Marjan Khorsand  6 , Elahe Soltani Fard  7 , Najmeh Sedighimehr  8 , Marzieh Kazemi  9 , Khojaste Rahimi Jaberi  10 , Melika Moradi  11 , Parvaneh Nafisi Fard  12 , Mohammad Hasan Darvishi  13 , Ahmad Movahedpour  14
Affiliations
Review

Exosomes: Promising Delivery Tools for Overcoming Blood-Brain Barrier and Glioblastoma Therapy

Seyyed Hossein Khatami et al. Mol Neurobiol. 2023 Aug.

Abstract

Gliomas make up virtually 80% of all lethal primary brain tumors and are categorized based on their cell of origin. Glioblastoma is an astrocytic tumor that has an inferior prognosis despite the ongoing advances in treatment modalities. One of the main reasons for this shortcoming is the presence of the blood-brain barrier and blood-brain tumor barrier. Novel invasive and non-invasive drug delivery strategies for glioblastoma have been developed to overcome both the intact blood-brain barrier and leverage the disrupted nature of the blood-brain tumor barrier to target cancer cells after resection-the first treatment stage of glioblastoma. Exosomes are among non-invasive drug delivery methods and have emerged as a natural drug delivery vehicle with high biological barrier penetrability. There are various exosome isolation methods from different origins, and the intended use of the exosomes and starting materials defines the choice of isolation technique. In the present review, we have given an overview of the structure of the blood-brain barrier and its disruption in glioblastoma. This review provided a comprehensive insight into novel passive and active drug delivery techniques to overcome the blood-brain barrier, emphasizing exosomes as an excellent emerging drug, gene, and effective molecule delivery vehicle used in glioblastoma therapy.

Keywords: Blood-brain barrier; Drug delivery; Exosomes; Glioblastoma.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Schematic representation of the healthy blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the blood-brain tumor barrier (BBTB)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Novel invasive and non-invasive drug delivery strategies to overcome the intact BBB and leverage the disrupted nature of the BBTB to target cancer cells of GBM. BBB: blood-brain barrier, BBTB: blood-brain tumor barrier, GBM: glioblastoma multiform
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Exosomes are vesicles with a phospholipid bilayer membrane that contain many kinds of proteins, such as membrane transporters, and heat shock proteins. In addition, it also contains a lot of ncRNA, including miRNA and lncRNA with surface protein markers. a Current exosome isolation techniques; b Schematic representation of exosome structure, c: Effective factors, conventional drugs, genes, and other natural compounds loaded into exosome for GBM therapy. GBM: glioblastoma multiform, lncRNA: long non-coding RNA, ncRNA: non-coding RNA, miRNA: microRNA
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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