4. Myocardial Infarction and Exosome Functions

The kind of message substances carried in exosomes is becoming increasingly clear. Research is underway to use exosomes to treat myocardial infarctions, which is a major cause of death.

The onset of a myocardial infarction causes cells to instantaneously become necrotic. It is difficult to be as healthy as before even if the person survives.

This is because heart cells are very slow to be replaced—only 30% of the cells are replaced in 50 years.

However, studies have found that exosomes in the heart contain a very small amount of microRNAs that have messages to renew heart cells. If we can effectively make use of these microRNAs, we may be able to cure myocardial infarctions.

In experiments involving mice, the myocardial cells of mice who had a myocardial infarction became necrotic, and the number of cells also decreased drastically—however, the heart walls of mice with artificially increased microRNAs surprisingly returned to a healthy state.

This is about to revolutionize the world of medicine.