Development of Exosomes Drug Delivery Systems for Stroke Treatment

As a brain drug delivery system, exosomes have the advantages of low immunogenicity, high transport efficiency, inherent stability, and the ability to cross the blood brain barrier (BBB). Studies have proved that exosomes can be used as effective carriers of nucleic acids, proteins, and even drugs. At the same time, exosomes have therapeutic effects on stroke relief. Therefore, exosomes are a very ideal and effective drug delivery system. Ace Therapeutics provides a range of services to develop exosome drug delivery systems for stroke treatment.

Isolation & Characterization of Exosomes

Exosomes can be obtained from blood, urine, plasma, cerebrospinal fluid, and other sources. Ace Therapeutics provides comprehensive services to isolate and characterize exosomes from different sources.

• Exosome Isolation
  Density gradient separation, sequential centrifugal ultrafiltration by tangential flow filtration, ExoQuick-TC, AC electrokinetic microarray chip devices, and other methods for rapid exosome isolation.
• Exosome Characterization
  Nanoparticle tracking analysis, dynamic light scattering, resistive pulse sensing, atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and flow cytometry.

Exosomes Drug Loading

The efficiency of drug loading is critical to establishing the outcome of an exosome drug delivery system. Common drug loading methods are physical and chemical. Ace Therapeutics provides different drug loading services, and our scientists will select and design suitable drug loading solutions for you according to your experiments.

Drug loading methods for exosome drug delivery systems: ultrasound method, mixed co-culture, electroporation, freeze-thaw cycles, extrusion, saponin permeation, and other methods.

• The methods applicable to the loading of compound drugs are generally: the ultrasonic method, mixed co-culture, electroporation, freeze-thaw, and extrusion.
• Electroporation is the most suitable loading method for nucleic acid drugs.
• Ultrasound and permeation are suitable for common macromolecular proteins.

Development of Liposome Systems for BBB Transport

Through surface functionalization and other technologies, some liposomal transport systems utilizing BBB have been developed to efficiently deliver drugs to the brain. Ace Therapeutics provides comprehensive services to develop appropriate liposomal transport systems for stroke pathology.

• Cationic Liposomes
  Surface positively charged liposomes can mediate electrostatic interactions with negatively charged sugar sacs on the luminal BBB membrane to initiate AMT.
• Long-Circulating Liposomes
  Prolonged cycle surface modifications that lead to higher brain absorption include polyethylene glycol covalently bound to liposomal surfaces. This protects liposomes from binding to protein plasma, preventing opsonization activity and subsequent liposomal clearance.
• Targeted Liposomes Using Various Ligands
  Common ligands include the transferrin receptor, GLUT-1 transporter, GSH transporters, nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, and some targeted peptides with shorter amino acids.

Preclinical Evaluation of Exosomes Drug Delivery Systems for Stroke Treatment

For exosomes loaded with drugs, Ace Therapeutics provides a series of services to detect the transfer efficiency of exosomes loaded with drugs and comprehensive evaluation in cells or animals.

• We provide different pharmacokinetic models to assess the distribution and uptake of drug-loaded exosomes.
• We provide in vitro and in vivo BBB models to assess the BBB permeability of drug-loaded exosomes.
• We provide different in vitro and in vivo stroke models to test the therapeutic effect of drug-loaded exosomes on stroke.
• We identify whether the drug is loaded by transmission electron microscopy and exosome particle size.
• The transfer efficiency of small molecule drugs is detected by HPLC.
• We detect foreign material by confocal or flow detection. The effect of loading is detected by measuring the proportion of different fluorescent markers or by flow cytometry.

If you would like to learn more about our services, please feel free to contact us.

1. Wang, M. M., et al., The role of exosomes in stroke. Mol Biol Rep, 2020. 47(8): p. 6217-6228.