Targeting regenerative exosomes to myocardial infarction using cardiac homing peptide

Vandergriff, Adam; Huang, Ke; Shen, Deliang; Hu, Shiqi; Hensley, Michael Taylor; Caranasos, Thomas G.; Qian, Li; Cheng, Ke

Exosomes produced by cardiosphere-derived stem cells (CDCs) have been proven to induce myocardial regeneration via transportation of miRNA to the myocardium [17] [18] [19] . Despite the efficacy of exosomes, the methods for delivery to the heart are less than ideal. Previous studies have used both intracoronary and intramyocardial injections, with intramyocardial delivery being the more effective of the two [20] . While intramyocardial injections are acceptable in animal studies, in a clinical setting it is a much more serious procedure requiring a physician to perform the catheterization procedure [21] . Ideally, exosomes would be delivered intravenously, but it has been shown that the majority of intravenous injected exosomes are absorbed within the liver [22] [23] [24] . To offset the non-specific delivery, in our previous study [25] we utilized a dosage that was approximately ten times greater than what was used for intramyocardial studies [18] as shown in Table 1 .