ABSTRACT
Wound healing is an important physiological process as well as one of the problems to be solved in clinical medicine. Plant-derived exosomes are green, safe and efficient, and are expected to provide a new solution for wound healing. In this paper, ginseng exosomes were extracted and purified by hypervelocity centrifugation, and were identified to be consistent with the microscopic identification characteristics of exosomes. Fluorescence dye was used to label exosomes, which showed that exosomes could be ingested by skin cells. CCK-8 methods indicated that ginseng exosomes could promote the proliferation of skin cells at 24 h and 48 h (P<0. 05). Panax ginseng exosomes detected by real-time quantitative PCR increased the transcription levels of human collagen type 1 琢1 chain (COL1A1) and fibronectin-1 (human fibronecin-1) genes in skin cells (P<0. 05).Western blotting analysis showed that ginseng exosomes could increase the protein levels of TGF-β1 (transforming growth factor-β Ⅰ), Vimentin and Ki67 in skin cells (P<0. 05). The skin injury experiment in mice confirmed that ginseng exosomes could accelerate recovery after skin injury. Moreover, the inflammatory cytokines such as nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), INOS (nitric oxide synthase) and cycoxidase (COX-2) could be decreased (P < 0. 05). In this study, ginseng exosomes were successfully extracted and purified by hypervelocity centrifugation combined with density gradient centrifugation, which suggested that ginseng exosomes can regulate the skin cell cycle, activate the TGF-β pathway, promote the proliferation of skin cells, accelerate the recovery of damaged skin, and reduce the level of inflammatory factors.