Characterization of Exosomes and Synthesized Exosome-Based Liposomes to Establish a Drug Delivery Scheme for the Treatment of Epilepsy.

Epilepsy is one of the most prevalent, chronic, critical neurological diseases. Due to the ability of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to prevent the entry of drugs into the brain, pharmaceutical treatment of central nervous system diseases is a challenge. The development of nanotechnology offers the ability to overcome this issue. Our objective was to evaluate the possibility of an exosome-based drug delivery system program for an anti-epileptic drug (AED) to treat epileptic patients. For this purpose, we isolated exosomes by a size exclusion method (SEC), then exosomes were characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and mass spectrometry (MS). Further, we synthesized exosome-based liposomes using Avanti extruder, and afterwards, liposomes were characterized by DLS. Finally, we isolated porcine brain endothelial cells (PBECs), as an in vitro BBB model, followed by a viability test. We found that isolation and characterization of exosomes, and also preparing and characterization of liposomes by the presented approaches, was feasible and showed purity and homogeneity of yields. We found that several lipids were enriched in exosomes from blood plasma. Finally, we found that to achieve a proper in vitro BBB model for drug delivery studies, optimization of cell isolation procedures and cell culture conditions of individual models seems to be of essential importance