Potential application of extracellular vesicles of human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells in Alzheimer's disease therapeutics.

In the last 20 years, extracellular vesicles (EVs) have attracted attention as a versatile cell-cell communication mediator. The biological significance of EVs remains to be fully elucidated, but many reports have suggested that the functions of EVs mirror, at least in part, those of the cells from which they originate. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are a type of adult stem cell that can be isolated from connective tissue including bone marrow and adipose tissue and have emerged as an attractive candidate for cell therapy applications. Accordingly, an increasing number of reports have shown that EVs derived from MSCs have therapeutic potential in multiple diseases. We recently reported a novel therapeutic potential of EVs secreted from human adipose tissue-derived MSCs (hADSCs) (also known as adipose tissue-derived stem cells; ASCs) against Alzheimer's disease (AD). We found that hADSCs secrete exosomes carrying enzymatically active neprilysin, the most important β-amyloid peptide (Aβ)-degrading enzyme in the brain. In this chapter, we describe a method by which to evaluate the therapeutic potential of hADSC-derived EVs against AD from the point of view of their Aβ-degrading capacity.