Exosome-based drug delivery in cancer therapy: Advances and future perspectives

Abstract

Despite significant advancements in cancer treatment, the efficacy of chemotherapy and other anti-cancer drugs is often limited by their toxicity and off-target effects. Recent progress in drug delivery systems has led to the development of novel carriers designed to enhance drug efficacy while minimizing toxicity. Among these carriers, exosomes have garnered considerable attention due to their unique properties, including low immunogenicity, high stability, target specificity, and the ability to elicit anti-cancer immune responses. This targeted approach may enhance drug accumulation at tumor sites while reducing systemic toxicity compared to conventional drug delivery methods.

Despite their therapeutic promise, exosome-based drug delivery faces critical translational barriers, which include limited scalable isolation methods, lack of standardized characterization protocols, and suboptimal drug loading efficiency. Recent bioengineering innovations have achieved improvements in drug loading capacity, while advanced isolation techniques now enable large-scale exosome production. Currently, exosome-based cancer therapeutics are advancing through clinical trials, demonstrating enhanced therapeutic indices and reduced systemic toxicity compared to conventional treatments.

Exosomes represent transformative precision medicine platforms for cancer therapy, with clinical translation dependent on establishing standardized manufacturing protocols and implementing biomarker-driven patient stratification strategies to optimize therapeutic outcomes.