The effect of exosomes isolated from human foreskin stem cells on wound healing

Wound healing is one of the important processes in the body. The wounds are separated into two groups when considering the healing time and process: acute wounds and chronic wounds. Side effects of natural and chemical wound healing compounds to the human body are well known. Due to these side effects, attempts to create new drugs are of interest. Therefore, the use of stem cells has augmented. However, both difficulties in collection and risks such as rejection and teratoma in the recipient body have limited the use of stem cells. The extracellular vesicles secreted by stem cells have recently become prominent agents. With the use of these agents, the potential content of the stem cells can be transferred to the recipient cells without an immune response, and since it is easier to obtain than the stem cells, it has been used as a new generation wound healing agent. In this study, the wound healing effect of exosomes derived from foreskin stem cells was investigated on both keratinocyte and endothelial cells in vitro. Cell migration, new vessel formation, inflammation response, quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot experiments were performed to investigate the potential positive contribution to gene and protein levels and the underlying mechanisms. Overall, cell proliferation, cell invasion and cell migration were accelerated in exosome treated groups compared to the control group and new vessel formation was inducted in exosome treated groups. Increase in gene levels of growth factors related to proliferation and inflammation, and change in related signaling pathway proteins in exosome treated groups compared to the control group were shown. Possible molecular mechanisms underlying cell movements were associated with mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. We found that foreskin stem cell exosomes can heal the wound in a short period of time so that it could be a promising wound healing agent. The current study was the first study in the literature representing the wound healing activity of foreskin stem cell-derived exosomes.