With the continuous progress of bioengineering technology and drug development, there will be more situations where traditional drug delivery methods cannot achieve high-efficiency drug delivery. Therefore, finding effective and safe drug delivery methods has become one of the greatest challenges in human healthcare. In situ administration (ISA) refers to the method of directly injecting drugs into the lesion site. ISA has many advantages such as simple operation, local administration, prolonged drug release time, and reduced drug dosage. In recent years, a number of studies have carried out therapeutic exosome delivery to the lesion site through ISA for therapeutic evaluation of the disease. Creative Biolabs has been paying attention to the administration routes and therapeutic effects of various therapeutic exosomes and can provide the most reliable exosome technology services for global customers.

Advantages of In situ Administration

Among the various modes of administration, oral or intravenous administration of drugs tends to cause the drug to be distributed throughout the body, resulting in adverse reactions other than therapeutic effects. Compared with systemic drug delivery, ISA has two main advantages.

• ISA only requires local anesthesia or minimal trauma, which greatly reduces the patient's pain.
• Topical ISA and appropriate solvents can prolong the drug release period.

Fig.1 Advantages of drug delivery systems (DDSs) for localized Drug Administration. (Antimisiaris, 2021)

Application of Exosomes in In Situ Gel Sustained-release System

Due to the short half-life of exosomes in the body and the ease of rapid clearance from the body, it is urgent to develop a drug delivery method to prolong the retention time of exosomes in the lesion. Recently, in situ gel sustained-release systems (ISGSRS) have been increasingly used in the ISA delivery of exosomes. Before being injected, in situ gel (ISG) is a relatively low-viscosity liquid state gel. After the ISG containing therapeutic exosomes is injected, its physical form changes rapidly, forming a semi-solid gel state at the site of administration, thereby forming a drug depot. ISG can be applied to subcutaneous, intramuscular, ocular, nasal, oral, vaginal, rectal, and other routes of administration. Therefore, as a new type of drug delivery system, ISGSRS has unique advantages in the preparation process, choice of drug delivery route, bioavailability, etc., and has remarkable potential in exosome therapy. For example, intrapericardial injection of a hydrogel containing therapeutic exosomes forms a cardiac patch-like structure in the pericardial cavity, thereby attenuating cardiac remodeling and improving cardiac function after myocardial infarction.

Fig.2 Schematic showing intrapericardial delivery of exosomes for minimally invasive (MI) therapy. (Zhu, 2021)

Creative Biolabs can provide one-stop exosome technical services including exosome extraction, exosome identification, exosome engineering, and exosome functional verification in vivo and in vitro. If you have therapeutic exosomes that cannot achieve the therapeutic effect through traditional drug administration, please contact us to raise your confusion. We will formulate the most suitable ISA experimental plan for you to accelerate the transformation of your results.

References

1. Antimisiaris, SG.; Marazioti, A.; et al. Overcoming barriers by local drug delivery with liposomes. Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews. 2021. 174:53-86.
2. Zhu, D.; Li, Z.; et al. Minimally invasive delivery of therapeutic agents by hydrogel injection into the pericardial cavity for cardiac repair. Nature Communications. 2021. 12(1):1412.

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