MSC-derived extracellular vesicles accelerate wound healing in senescent fibroblast cultures

Wound healing (WH) is a multi-component and highly orchestrated process, in which fibroblasts play a pivotal role. Wound healing is commonly attenuated during aging and the course of cellular senescence (CS). A growing body of evidence demonstrates that mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) can mitigate the aging and CS phenotype. In this study, we evaluated the effects of EVs derived from naïve MSCs (nMSCs) or anti-inflammatory polarized MSCs (pMSCs) on the rate of in vitro wound healing in primary cultures of human pulmonary fibroblasts (HPF) at various stages of cellular senescence. The major finding of this study is that MSC-derived EVs increase the rate of in vitro WH in senescent but not young HPF cultures. Yet, the pMSC-derived EVs had a stronger impact on WH acceleration in senescent cultures as compared to the nMSC-derived EVs, and this impact was apparently attributed to cell migration.