Exosomes: A Novel Therapeutic Agent for Cartilage and Bone Tissue Regeneration

Despite traditionally treating autologous and allogeneic transplantation and emerging tissue engineering (TE)-based therapies, which have commonly performed in clinic for skeletal diseases, as the “gold standard” for care, undesirably low efficacy and other complications remain. Therefore, exploring new strategies with better therapeutic outcomes and lower incidences of unfavorable side effect is imperative. Recently, exosomes, secreted microvesicles of endocytic origin, have caught researcher’s eyes in tissue regeneration fields, especially in cartilage and bone-related regeneration. Multiple researchers have demonstrated the crucial roles of exosomes throughout every developing stage of cartilage and bone tissue regeneration, indicating that there may be a potential therapeutic application of exosomes in future clinical use. Herein, we summarize the function of exosomes derived from the primary cells functioning in skeletal diseases and their restoration processes, therapeutic exosomes used to promote cartilage and bone repairing in recent research, and applications of exosomes within the setting of the TE matrix.