Reviewing applications of liposomes and exosomes in bone regenerative medicine

Bone regeneration is a natural process of body, happening through lifetime either to heal fractures caused by trauma or to generally reform the bones during adulthood. However due to clinical issues such as bone diseases, traumas creating defects, cancers, infections and degenerative and inflammatory conditions bone regeneration needs to happen faster and in great quantity. Bone tissue lacks sufficient blood flow, so its treatment is difficult and has multiple complications, including bone breakage, reduced quality of life, spinal cord or nerve compression, and pain. Some of the current standard clinical methods to enhance regeneration apply growth factors, cell therapy, or even genetic engineering. While helpful and valuable these treatments each have their disadvantages such as long treatment periods, immune reaction to foreign biological and chemical substances, being costly and inefficiency. Therefore, bone regenerative medicine still needs improvement. a strategy gaining attention constantly is the use of body’s natural nanocarriers in order to facilitate substance delivery and uptake of drug. Extracellular vesicles like liposomes and exosomes are examples of such. The difference is exosomes carry membrane proteins and only can be obtained from natural resources, but liposomes are simple vesicles that can be created artificially. The application of these nano vesicles as carriers for bone regenerative substances has been researched by various groups in the past decade; The aim of this review, is to note, explain and summarize the applications and also the differences of these nano particles for bone regenerative medicine.