Glioblastoma‐Derived Exosomes as Nanopharmaceutics for Improved Glioma Treatment

Abstract

The use of cancer‐derived exosomes has been studied in several cancer types, but the can-cer‐targeting efficacy of glioma‐derived exosomes has not been investigated in depth for malignant glioblastoma (GBM) cells. In this study, exosomes were derived from U87MG human glioblastoma cells, and selumetinib, a new anticancer drug, was loaded into the exosomes. We observed the tropism of GBM‐derived exosomes in vitro and in vivo. We found that the tropism of GBM‐derived exosomes is in contrast to the behavior of non‐exosome‐enveloped drugs and non‐GBM‐specific exosomes in vitro and in vivo in an animal GBM model. We found that the tropism exhibited by GBM‐derived exosomes can be utilized to shuttle selumetinib, with no specific targeting moiety, to GBM tumor sites. Therefore, our findings indicated that GBM‐derived exosomes loaded with selu-metinib had a specific antitumor effect on U87MG cells and were non‐toxic to normal brain cells. These exosomes offer improved therapeutic prospects for glioblastoma therapy.