Exosomes derived from human umbilical cord Wharton's jelly mesenchymal stem cells ameliorate experimental lymphedema.

Acquired lymphedema is a complex disease caused by cancer treatment or parasitic infection and few effective treatments are available for lymphedema.1-3 It is urgently needed to develop new experimental approaches and therapeutic strategies.3 In this study, we address a new role and mechanism of MSC-ex (human umbilical cord Wharton's jelly mesenchymal stem cells derived exosome) in lymphedema treatment. MSC-ex treatment promoted lymphatic drainage in lymphedema mice as injected methylene blue across the site of incision at week 6, which was not found in PBS treated mice (Figure 1J). As lymphangiogenesis is crucial in lymphedema development after lymphatic ablation,4,5 we analyzed the lymphatic anatomy and lymphangiogenesis in MSC-ex treated animals. [Extracted from the article]