Perspective in Nuclear Theranostics Using Exosome for the Brain

Abstract

Owing to its highly biocompatible property as naturally produced nanoscale particle and drug carrying ability, exosome has attracted much interest in the biomedical area. Versatile functions of exosome in biological system play an important role in elucidating mysterious and unknown biological processes and pathological disease progression. For usage of exosome as brain disease therapeutics, even though the ability of exosomes crossing blood brain barrier (BBB) is not well clearly proven, the small size and their own characteristics possessing cell-derived molecular contents may provide great and beneficial tools for brain delivery and brain-associated disease therapy. A variety of trials related to bioapplications using stem cell-derived exosome in regenerative therapy or autologous exosome shuttling inhibitor targeting brain disease-associated protein marker enhance possibility of exosome toward clinical application. The radionuclide PET or SPECT imaging of radiolabeled exosome will be clearly able to provide accurate clues for analyzing their whole body distribution, targeting efficacy, and the degree of non-specific tissue uptake. In this perspective, the practical information on thranostics of exosome for brain delivery and therapy is offered and radionuclide-based exosome applicability will be dealt with.