The Role of Exosomes in the Regulation of Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Treatment Resistance—Linking Cellular Crosstalk to Clinical Implications in Depression

TL;DR

Exosomes may help explain treatment resistance in depression and could serve as biomarkers or drug delivery tools for the brain.

Contribution

This review explores the role of exosomes in depression, focusing on their potential as biomarkers and therapeutic tools for treatment-resistant depression.

Findings

Exosomes may carry miRNAs and BDNF, which could disrupt synaptic plasticity and contribute to antidepressant resistance.

Engineered exosomes show promise as targeted drug carriers for the central nervous system.

Standardization of exosome isolation methods and safety data are major challenges for clinical application.

Abstract

Depressive disorders (DDs), especially treatment-resistant depression (TRD), pose a significant challenge worldwide, largely because their underlying biological mechanisms are complicated and treatments often fall short. There is growing evidence pointing to factors like disrupted neuroplasticity, neuroinflammation, irregularities in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, and glutamatergic system imbalances as contributors to the onset and persistence of depressive symptoms. Exosomes (small extracellular vesicles involved in communication between cells) have recently gained attention for their potential role in connecting peripheral and central nervous system (CNS) changes. They carry proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids and are even capable of crossing the blood–brain barrier. Because of this, exosomes might provide a window into molecular changes in the brain and serve as accessible biomarkers of disease status and treatment response. Recent research points out that the contents of exosomes, especially microRNAs (miRNAs) and neurotrophic factors like brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), might play a part in disrupting synaptic plasticity and could be linked to resistance to antidepressants. At the same time, there is growing interest in using engineered exosomes as targeted drug carriers aimed at the CNS. That said, there are still quite a few hurdles to overcome. Methods vary widely between studies, protocols for isolating exosomes are not sufficiently standardized, safety data are limited, and we do not fully understand how drugs and exosomes interact or how they behave pharmacokinetically. This review brings together current findings regarding exosomes in DDs (with particular emphasis on TRD), highlights their promise for diagnosis and treatment, and sets out some of the main questions that need to be answered before clinical application becomes feasible.

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