By now, you’ve probably seen “exosomes” wafting across your For You page, maybe sandwiched between a promo code for snail mucin and someone rendering beef tallow. Scroll through SkinTok long enough and you’ll hit a flood of videos hyping exosome therapy, exosome serums, and exosome treatments promising the skin health of a cherub.
Skin care companies have seized the term. Marketed as miraculous regenerative agents, you’ll find them on $300 facial menus, in post-micro-needling procedures, and across influencers’ skin-care routines.
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What Are Exosomes?
An exosome is a teeny sac inside a cell, or what a scientist might call an extracellular vesicle. They act as tiny mailbags, shuttling mRNAs, lipids, and other genetic material through the cell membranes from one cell to another.
Exosomes are a part of the body’s internal messaging system, regulating everything from cell growth to hormone production and gene expression. They’re microscopic, measuring about 40 to 100 nanometers across, so small they make a red blood cell look massive in comparison. Scientists first discovered them under a microscope back in the 1960s, but they didn’t gain significant attention until the early 2000s.
Why Are Exosomes Controversial?
In medicine, exosomes are being studied for cancer therapies, neurodegenerative diseases, and drug delivery systems. Because they reflect the state of the cells from which they originate, cancer cells often release exosomes that contain unique molecular fingerprints. Scientists are already using these biomarkers to assist in the early diagnosis of conditions like prostate cancer. The potential for early, noninvasive detection across a range of diseases is substantial.
Because exosomes can cross biological barriers and deliver cargo, researchers are also exploring them as vehicles for targeted drugs. Additionally, they hold potential for wound healing, inflammation reduction, and tissue regeneration.
Naturally, the beauty industry caught wind. Now, exosomes are in moisturizers, serums, and hair injectables, promising to repair your skin barrier, boost collagen production, and reverse aging.
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But here’s where it gets murky. Most published clinical studies on exosome skin care are small-scale or lack rigorous controls. Exosomes, unlike pharmaceuticals, have no fixed composition or standardized dosing, and they lack good manufacturing practices (GMPs). This variability makes patient outcomes hard to predict. And their contents may shift from batch to batch. Sources also vary—from mesenchymal stem cells and platelets to plant cells and umbilical cord tissue.
“Not all exosomes are the same,” says Jodi Gurney, cofounder of Exotropin, a skin-care brand selling what they call exoceuticals. “The source, production process, and cargo all determine how effective they are.”
“There’s currently no technology that allows manufacturers to put exosomes into a bottle, put it on a shelf, and keep them from degrading,” says Jimmy Sung, a board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon specializing in regenerative aesthetics. “Even if they say, ‘We put x amount in,’ there’s no way to verify how many remain active. And they won’t put that in writing or testify to it under oath.”
If companies were to purify exosomes to pharmaceutical-grade standards, they’d need to classify them as drugs. Many combine them with traditional skin-care ingredients like hyaluronic acid or vitamin C to skirt that. This also means that if consumers are noticing positive results, it may be due to the additives (not the alleged exosomes).
Are They Safe?
Exosomes aren’t live cells, so they carry less risk than stem cell therapies. Still, they’re biologically active, meaning that contamination is a serious concern. Improper purification can result in products that contain unwanted cargo: viral miRNAs, immunosuppressive agents, and tumor-growth factors (to name a few).
“I personally avoid using non-autologous exosomes in my practice unless I can thoroughly vet the product’s origin, safety data, and mechanism of action,” Hannah Kopelman, a dermatologist specializing in hair and scalp disorders, writes in an email to WIRED. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued warnings about the misuse of unapproved exosome products, and as a practitioner, that raises a red flag. I can’t in good conscience offer a product I wouldn’t use on myself or my own family unless I’m fully confident.”
