Comparison of the therapeutic effects between stem cells and exosomes in primary ovarian insufficiency: As promising as cells but different persistency and dosage.
Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) refers to the loss of ovarian function under the age of 40 and results in amenorrhea and infertility. Our previous studies have shown that transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and MSC-derived exosomes in chemotherapy-induced POI mouse ovaries can reverse the POI and eventually achieve pregnancy. Based on our recent studies, MSC-derived exosomes have almost equal therapeutic potentials as transplanted MSCs. However, it is still unclear whether exosomes can completely replace MSCs in POI treatment. In this study, we induced POI in C57/BL6 mice by chemotherapy (CXT) using a standard protocol. We compared the RNA expression pattern in ovarian tissue after MSC or exosome treatment. our data suggest that a minimal 10-fold increase, and ideally 100-fold increase, in the exosome concentration is required to generate more analogous results to MSC treatment. Overall design: To find difference between exosome treatment and MSC treatment (10,000 cells), we injected same amount of exosome particle produced from 10,000 cells(1-fold), higher amounts of exosome particles (10-fold and 100-fold) into the POI model and analyzed ovarian follicles. Next, we compared the RNA expression pattern in ovarian tissue. Expriment 1 (Exp1) is MSC treated set, experiment 2 (Exp2) is UC-exosome treated set, experiment 3(Exp3) is BM-exosome treated set.