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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Neuroimmune Pharmacol. 2019 Aug 27;15(3):422–442. doi: 10.1007/s11481-019-09873-y

Table 5.

Administration routes used for EV drug delivery

Administrative
route
EV source Biodistribution of
EVs
Cargo/modification Purpose Reference
Intranasal
Tumor cells Microglial cells Curcumin Treatment of LPS- induced brain inflammation (Zhuang et al., 2011)
Macrophages Throughout the brain Catalase Drug delivery for Parkinson’s disease (Haney et al., 2015)
Astrocytes Heart, lung,brain,liver, Gut. Microglial cells si-LincRNA-COX2 Block morphine-mediated impairment of microglial phagocytosis (Hu et al., 2018)
Macrophages N/A M. tuberculosis lipoprotein, culture filtrate proteins Decreased growth of M. tuberculosis in the lung (Cheng and Schorey, 2013)
Intravenous
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) Liver, brain and spleen Near-infrared (NIR) dye (DiD) labeling Targeting acute kidney injury (Grange et al., 2014)
MSCs Cardiac cells Unmodified Decrease Myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury (Arslan et al., 2013)
MSCs Lung vascular cells Unmodified Decreased lung inflammation and hypoxia-induced hypertension (Lee et al., 2012)
ESC-derived MSCs Cardiac cells Unmodified Reduced myocardial infarct size and inflammation (Arslan et al., 2013)
HEK293 HCC70 cells > HCC1954 or MCF-7 cells (EGFR- dependent mechanism) GE11- or EGF- positive exosomes Tumor targeting (Ohno et al., 2013)
HEK293 Liver, spleen and plasma Heterodimeric cytokine complex Interleukin-15: Interleukin-15 receptor alpha Efficient production and enhanced tumor delivery (Watson et al., 2016)
Dendritic cells (DCs) Brain Lamp2b fused to the neuron-specific RVG peptide Delivery of siRNA to the mouse brain by systemic injection of targeted exosomes. (Alvarez- Erviti et al., 2011)
DCs Human breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231(αv integrin- dependent machanism) Doxorubicin-loaded EVs from DCs expressing iRGD Decreased tumor growth compared to free doxorubicin or untargeted EVs (Tian et al., 2014)
Breast cancer 4T1 cell line Tumor, liver and Intestine pCMV-luc2/miR-210 Visualization of exosome-mediated miR-210 transfer (Jung et al., 2017)
293T Spleen >Liver >Lung and Kidney> Brain, heart and muscle Gaussia luciferase and biotin on the surface of EVs Dynamic biodistribution (Lai et al., 2014)
Intracardiac
Cardiac progenitor cells H9C2 cardiomyoblasts GATA4-responsive-miR-451 Inhibited cardiomyocyte apoptosis (Chen et al., 2013)
Cardiosphere-derived cells Cardiomyocyte, HUVEC miR-146a Cardiac regeneration (Ibrahim et al., 2014)
GATA-4 overexpressing MSCs Myocardium ischemic boarder area miR-19a Cardioprotective capabilities of exosomes (Yu et al., 2015)
Intraperitoneal
HEK293 Tumor tissue IL3-Lamp2b EVs loaded with Imatinib or with BCR-ABL siRNA Inhibits Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia cell growth (Bellavia et al., 2017)
MSCs N/A Unmodified Postischemic Immunosuppression (Doeppner et al., 2015)
Intramuscular
MSCs SVEC4 endothelial cells VEGF protein and miR-210–3p Accelerated recovery of hindlimb ischemia (Gangadaran et al., 2017)
Adipose stem cells Adipose stem cells (ASCs) Ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles New approach for labeling of exosomes that allows detection by MRI (Busato et al., 2016)
Intradermal
MSCs Lung, liver and kidney DP cells DiD-labeled MSC- EVs Dermal papilla activation (Rajendran et al., 2017)
Footpad
Mouse B16-F10 melanoma cells N/A Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles Magnetic resonance imaging of melanoma exosomes in lymph nodes (Hu et al., 2015)
Bone marrow- derived DCs CD11c+ cells FasL Inhibit the progression of established collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) (Kim et al., 2006)
Oral
Grape juice Intestinal stem cells Unmodified Decreased colitis-induced colon shrinkage and mortality (Ju et al., 2013)
Subcutaneous
Splenic DCs N/A Toxoplasma gondii-derived antigens Fewer T. gondii cysts in mother and pup brains, increased pup survival (Beauvillain et al., 2009)
Multiple
Intravenous Intracardiac Lung, liver & brain tumor cells, breast and pancreatic cancer cells Lung and liver Exosomal integrins α6β4, α6β1 and αvβ5 Organotropic metastasis (Hoshino et al., 2015)
Intravenous Intratumor Breast cancer cell lines Liver, spleen and kidneys Unmodified Biodistribution and delivery efficiency (Smyth et al., 2015)