REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Precision Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1599392
This article is part of the Research TopicNanomedicine Targeting Central Nervous SystemView all 5 articles
Therapeutic/diagnostic implications of exosomes as a natural nanoparticle: a new paradigm in brain cancer disease management
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Missouri, Columbia, United States
- 2National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, United States
- 3University of North Carolina System, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
- 4Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, Karnataka, India
- 5Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
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The clinical translation of safe and effective therapeutic methods for brain cancer treatment is a major challenge that persists in modern medicine. The insufficient drug delivery into the regime of the affected brain tissue due to blood-brain barrier (BBB) restriction, leads to a poor prognosis of the disease. However, an alternative strategy using biomaterials like exosomes can offer advancement in the treatment strategy of brain cancer. Exosomes are a type of extracellular microvesicles with a size of 30-100 nm in diameter, principally functioning as intercellular mediators in cell signalling process. Due to their biological origin, exosomes demonstrate a significant ability to cross the BBB and possess enhanced biocompatibility, high drug-loading capacity, and low immunogenicity. With the innate property of biomolecule delivery, exosomes also offer enhanced cellular uptake, rendering them exceptional in drug delivery systems. Herein, we are focusing on the anticancer/diagnostic applications of exosomes for brain cancer therapeutics. The enhancement in the physio-chemical properties of various cell-derived exosomes can be effectively used as a prime drug delivery agent in most treatment strategies. The biphasic and fast drug release in acidic pH of tumour microenvironment by exosome-mediated drug delivery system contribute a passive targeting, often considered as advantageous over other drug delivery platforms. These characteristic features are likely to enhance the therapeutic potential and efficacy of the treatment. The exosome loaded with drug as an efficient biomaterial to surpass BBB, followed by efficient cellular uptake leading to the cytotoxicity in glioblastoma cells. In this review, we concise the recent updates in the theranostic/prognostic strategies using exosome as a mediator and their prevalence in the biomedical application focusing on brain cancer diseases.
Keywords: exosome, brain cancer, theranostic, IRGD, BBB, Extracellular vescicles, Nanoparticles, liquid biospsy
Received: 24 Mar 2025; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mohiyuddin, Dipankar, R V, J and Karthikeyan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: J Karthikeyan, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Chennai, 600127, Tamil Nadu, India
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.