Mesenchymal Stem Cell Exosomes to Treat Disc Degeneration

First generation stem cell therapies involve sourcing immune privileged cells from sources such as umbilical cord blood, or a patient's own cells from fat tissue or similar, expanding the cells in culture, and then injecting them. Only minimal modifications are permitted to cells prior to transplantation in the US, before it would be classed as a therapy that must go through the IND process with the FDA for specific approval. Outside the US, in the medical tourism market, a range of approaches are undertaken with the goal of altering cultured cell behavior to improve patient outcomes. Unfortunately very little of this is backed by published human trial data. This class of cell therapy produces little to no engraftment of the transplanted cells. Benefits result from the signals generated by the transplanted cells in the short time before they die. The primary outcome is a reduction in inflammatory signaling, dampening the chronic inflammation associated with aging and disease, with some hope of improved tissue maintenance and regeneration. Beneficial outcomes beyond a reduction in inflammation have proven to be quite unreliable, however. Given that signaling is the mechanism, and that a sizable fraction of molecular traffic between cells is carried in extracellular vesicles such as exosomes, researchers and clinicians have increasingly focused on harvesting these vesicles as a basis for therapy. It is much easier (and thus cheaper) to store, transport, and use ex...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs