bims-exocan 2025-06-01 papers

Issue of 2025–06–01
two papers selected by
Muhammad Rizwan, COMSATS University

Front Pharmacol. 2025 ;16 1596217

Tumor-derived exosomes as promising tools for cancer diagnosis and therapy.

Xirui Wang, Yanfang Liu, Yaowen Jiang, Qinghua Li.

Mounting evidences indicated that cancer cell-derived exosomes (TDEs) contribute to cancer progression and metastasis by reshaping the tumor microenvironment (TME) and interfering immunity response. TDEs contain unique biomolecular cargo, consisting of protein, nucleic acid, and lipids. In recent years, TDEs have been used as potential disease therapeutics and diagnosis biomarkers and prime candidates as delivery tools for cancer treatment. In the present review, we firstly summarized TDEs biogenesis and characteristic. Also, the role of TDEs in cancer cell metastasis and invasiveness, drug resistance, and immunosuppression was mentioned via cell-cell communication. Additionally, we concluded the current strategies for TDE-based cancer therapy, including TDEs inhibition and clearance, usage as therapeutic drug delivery vector and cancer vaccines. Furthermore, combination therapy with engineered TDEs were summarized, such as radiotherapy, photodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy, and sonodynamic therapy. Consequently, the above opens up novel and interesting opportunities for cancer diagnosis and prognosis based on TDEs, which is prospective to accelerate the clinical translation of TDEs for cancer therapy.

Keywords: cancer diagnosis; cancer therapy; cancer vaccine; drug delivery; engineered exosomes; tumor-derived exosomes

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2025.1596217

Front Oncol. 2025 ;15 1540643

Exosomes: their role and therapeutic potential in overcoming drug resistance of gastrointestinal cancers.

Jiulian Liu, Shanyu Gao, Xiaoming Liu, Jiaxin Dong, Dingwei Zhen, Tong Liu.

Gastrointestinal cancers are prevalent malignant neoplasms in clinical medicine. The development of drug resistance in gastrointestinal cancers result in tumor recurrence and metastasis and greatly diminish the efficacy of treatment. Exosomes, as the shuttle of intercellular molecular cargoes in tumor micro-environment, secreted from tumor and stromal cells mediate drug resistance by regulating epithelial-mesenchymal transition, drug efflux, stem-like phenotype and cell metabolism. Meanwhile, exosomes have already received tremendous attention in biomedical study as potential drug resistant biomarkers as well as treatment strategy in gastrointestinal cancers. Primary challenge to implement this potential is the ability to obtain high-grade exosomes efficiently; however, exosomes lack standard protocols for their processing and characterization. Furthermore, this field suffers from insufficient standardized reference materials and workflow for purification, detection and analysis of exosomes with defined biological properties. This review summarize the unique biogenesis, composition and novel detection methods of exosomes and informed the underlying correlation between exosomes and drug resistance of gastrointestinal cancers. Moreover, the clinical applications of exosomes are also summarized, might providing novel therapy for the individual treatment of gastrointestinal cancers.

Keywords: biological function; clinical application; drug resistance; exosomes; gastrointestinal cancer

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2025.1540643