Unveiling the Potential of Plant-derived Exosomes: A Comprehensive Review.
Jaiswal S, Sethi M, Rana R, Tripathi S, Trivedi AK
Plant Signaling
Fruits, vegetables, and plants you eat every day naturally produce microscopic structures that scientists are now harnessing to fight cancer and deliver medicine — meaning your produce aisle could one day be part of a pharmaceutical supply chain.
Plants are constantly releasing tiny, bubble-like packages that carry messages between cells — and scientists have realized these packages can be collected and repurposed to carry medicine into the human body. Unlike similar structures harvested from animal cells, the plant version is easier to produce in large quantities and appears to be safer. Early research shows they can fight cancer cells and protect against cellular damage, though figuring out the best way to collect and load them with drugs is still a work in progress.
Key Findings
Plant-derived exosomes exhibit both anticancer and antioxidant properties, positioning them as dual-purpose therapeutic agents.
PDEs can deliver multiple types of medications with high reproducibility, outperforming many synthetic nanocarriers in consistency.
Current isolation and purification methods remain time-consuming, technically difficult, and sometimes unsafe, limiting large-scale clinical application.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants naturally produce tiny bubble-like packages called exosomes that carry proteins and genetic material. Scientists are finding these plant-derived exosomes can be harvested and engineered to deliver drugs inside the human body, with promising anticancer and antioxidant effects — and may be safer and easier to scale than animal-based equivalents.
Abstract Preview
Extracellular vesicles, including exosomes, are naturally produced by various cell types both in vivo and in vitro. These nanovesicles, composed of a lipid bilayer, proteins, and RNAs, play a pivot...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Was this useful?
Nanoplastics interfere with plant-mycorrhizal communication and limit plant growth.
Microplastics breaking down in your garden soil are quietly strangling the beneficial fungi that help your vegetables absorb phosphorus and other nutrients, ...