New way to repair nerves: Using exosomes to hijack cell-to-cell communication

Biomedical engineers report a new way to induce human mesenchymal stem cells to differentiate into neuron-like cells: treating them with exosomes from rat-derived progenitor cells. In combination with synthetic nanoparticles now in development, researchers hope to make synthetic exosomes, inducing neuron growth without neural progenitor cells.