Poster #048, City of Hope
Reproducibility of the Optimized Structure of Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cell-Derived Extracellular Vesicles (UCMSC-EVs) for Improved Pancreatic Targeting
Mentor: Junfeng Li, PhD
Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles (UCMSC-EVs) have shown therapeutic potential treatment of autoimmune and metabolic disorders. However, MSC-EVs have a low pancreatic uptake. To combat this issue, we conjugated GPR44 antagonist, which is used to target beta cells, onto MSC-EVs to enable them to better bind to human islet cells. In our initial study, GPR44 antagonist conjugated MSC-EVs showed higher binding affinity to human islet cells. We conduct reproducibility study to confirm initial results. We will have two groups, one consisting of GPR44 modified MSC-EVs and the other with only EVs. We then culture the EVs with human islet cells. We expect that the GPR44 MSC-EVs will have higher binding on human islet cells， with results consistent with our previous results. That strategy is expected to show that it could potentially benefit MSC-EVs binding to human islet cells.