SUNGKYUNKWAN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Growing evidence has demonstrated that the administration of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in various inflammatory skin diseases caused by autoimmune or allergic reactions can serve as promising therapeutics owing to their immunomodulatory effect and tissue regenerative capacity. Considering that direct application of MSCs often fails to reproduce stable therapeutic outcomes, partially due to harsh in vivo microenvironment leading to insufficient survival of injected cells, the concept of cell-free approaches utilizing MSC-derived paracrine factors including secretome and exosome has emerged to overcome present issues. Furthermore, various bioengineering techniques with biocompatible materials can be applied to modulate naïve secretome to improve their delivery efficiency and bioavailability in vivo. This review summarizes the therapeutic application of MSCs and their secretome targeting inflammatory skin diseases and current secretome engineering strategies for the clinical translation of cell-free therapeutics. This paper was published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation in October 2022 (Yoojin Seo et al., 53, p. 235–248 (2023))