Greetings from the Board Chairman of the Japan Exosome Medical Promotion Organization.

It has been more than 10 years since the exosome paper, reported in 2007, surprised researchers around the world with the discovery that microRNAs carried by exosomes act as communication tools between cells.

Just as the stress response mechanism that cells naturally possess, various signals from external loads imposed on the body lead not only to simple cell responses such as morphological changes, but also to the construction of a more dynamic defensive posture based on genomic and epigenomic changes. In recent years, it can be assumed that exosomes have developed as one of the response mechanisms required by cells, especially when considering cancer.

In the process from the initial development to invasion and progression of cancer, for cancer cells, which are outliers receiving surveillance and attack from a group of cells that constitute the microenvironment around cancer, acquiring the new weapon of exosomes makes it easy to evade the opponent's attack and successfully establish a microenvironment more favorable for the survival of cancer cells. Indeed, exosomes play an important role in the metastasis of cancer.

In addition to the importance of exosome research in the field of medical biology such as diagnosis and treatment, creation of drugs, etc., what is described here is the social implementation created by the results of exosome research. The closest to this is the medical application in the field of regenerative medicine. Globally, more than 100 preclinical trials (verification experiments with animal disease models) are already running in an open manner.

And more than 10 clinical studies have been conducted in the United States, France, China, Japan, Iran, and many of them are exosomes derived from human mesenchymal stem cells (bone marrow, fat, umbilical cord) and plants, and the target diseases are mainly "cancer", "chronic diseases", "intractable diseases", "heart diseases", "inflammatory diseases" etc. Many data showing the usefulness of exosomes as representatives of self-therapy surpassing cell therapy have been rapidly obtained in recent years due to this.

The next expected field of application opened up by exosome research is in the food and cosmetics industries. The utility of exosomes or exosome-like extracellular vesicles found in fruits and vegetables has already been proven (anti-inflammatory effects, etc.), and is being widely advertised around the world. In addition, cosmetics based on the mechanism of exosomes responsible for skin aging have been commercialized by major European cosmetics makers, and the demand for skin care is exploding. Currently, the global exosome market in the field of diagnosis and treatment already under development is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.4% during the forecast period(2020-2027), but if competition for productization in these food and cosmetics fields is added, the market could grow even larger.

On the other hand, the challenges of exosome research are numerous. The current dilemma faced by researchers all over the world is the heterogeneity of exosomes or EVs. It is an essential issue to overcome this challenge and make progress in research and application by standardizing exosome products. The development of exosome analysis devices for this standardization has also become a global competition. And for self-therapy, it is necessary to build a system for the purification of exosomes from thousands of liters of culture medium with high purity. Without technological innovation in these areas, it is impossible to realize a pre-disease society through exosome therapy.

Now is the time to gather a lot of wisdom and build a new system to make use of the natural delivery system of this old but new cell for the happiness of mankind.

Japan Exosome Medical Promotion Organization

Board Chairman Takahiro Ochiya