Abstract
Stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) have shown great promise in the field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Recently, human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell (BMSC)-derived EVs have been considered for bone tissue engineering applications. In this study, we evaluated the osteogenic capability of placental stem cell (PSC)-derived EVs and compared them to the well-characterized BMSC-derived EVs. EVs were extracted from three designated time points (0, 7, and 21 days) after osteogenic differentiation. The results showed that the PSC-derived EVs had much higher protein and lipid concentrations than EVs derived from BMSCs. The extracted EVs were characterized by observing their morphology and size distribution before utilizing next-generation sequencing to determine their microRNA (miRNA) profiles. A total of 306 miRNAs within the EVs were identified, of which 64 were significantly expressed in PSC-derived EVs that related to osteogenic differentiation. In vitro osteogenic differentiation study indicated the late-stage (21-day extracted)-derived EVs higher osteogenic enhancing capability when compared with the early stage-derived EVs. We demonstrated that EVs derived from PSCs could be a new source of EVs for bone tissue engineering applications.