New techniques are evolving constantly to try to improve us as we age. Call it regenerative medicine, anti aging, longevity, looking good for your age, aging gracefully- it doesn’t matter. We are trying to figure out how to slow down aging or reverse it.
Enter exosomes.
Exosomes are extracellular vesicles that are involved with cell to cell communications. They are related to immune response and diseases including cancer. They carry nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and metabolites. They vary with respect to size, content, function and source.
What are aesthetic indications?
- Scars. Animal studies have shown exosomes from fat derived stem cells shorten healing time and reduce scar formation. Umbilical cord stem cells were found to help scars. Exosomes from human induced stem cell derived mesenchymal stem cells promote skin reepithelialization (forming new skin) and new blood vessels, promote collagen maturity, and reduce scar width.
- Pigment regulation. Got darker skin? You may hyperpigment or depigment. Both of which we don’t like. It is all a blance of your melanin. Environmental factors can make you produce too much melanin. Keratinocyte exosomes can induce or suppress melanocyte factors, so it is being looked at to help with pigment issues.
- Hair growth. Dermal papilla cell exosomes can regulate hair follicle growth and encourage outer root sheath cells in animal studies. They were also found to increase growth factors, help the sheath cells, and accelerate anagen/delay catagen, letting you keep more hair in an active phase longer. This makes products like Nutrafol popular hair loss treatments.
- Skin. Your dermal fibroblasts decrease with aging. These cells make procollagen and elastic fibers. Exosomes can increase collagen type 1 and affect growth factors.
My thoughts?
Show me the science. You will see more blogs from me on the subject as there seems to be a “something” here. But given the different applications (hair? skin? topical? microneedling?) and the different sources (platelets? stem cells? plants? bone marrow? placental mesenchymal cells?) this seems like something where each individual source and application needs to be looked at.