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REVIEW article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Food Science Technology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1544746
This article is part of the Research Topic Integrating Plant Metabolites into Comprehensive Approaches for Disease Management View all articles
Advancing Functional Foods: A Systematic Analysis of Plant-Derived Exosome-Like Nanoparticles and Their Health-Promoting Properties
Provisionally accepted- 1 College of Food Engineering, Anhui Science and Technology University, Anhui, China
- 2 Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
- 3 School of Life and Health Sciences, Anhui Science and Technology University, Fengyang, China
Plant-derived exosome-like nanoparticles (PDENs), emerging as novel bioactive agents, exhibit significant potential in food science and nutritional health. These nanoparticles, enriched with plant-specific biomolecules such as proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and secondary metabolites, demonstrate unique cross-species regulatory capabilities, enabling interactions with mammalian cells and gut microbiota. PDENs enhance nutrient bioavailability by protecting sensitive compounds during digestion, modulate metabolic pathways through miRNA-mediated gene regulation, and exhibit anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. For instance, grape-derived PDENs reduce plasma triglycerides in high-fat diets, while ginger-derived nanoparticles alleviate colitis by downregulating pro-inflammatory cytokines. Additionally, PDENs serve as natural drug carriers, with applications in delivering therapeutic agents like doxorubicin and paclitaxel. Despite these advancements, challenges remain in standardizing extraction methods (ultracentrifugation, immunoaffinity), ensuring stability during food processing and storage, and evaluating long-term safety. Current research highlights the need for optimizing lyophilization techniques and understanding interactions between PDENs and food matrices. Furthermore, while PDENs show promise in functional food development-such as fortified beverages and probiotic formulations-their clinical translation requires rigorous pharmacokinetic studies and regulatory clarity. This review synthesizes existing knowledge on PDENs' composition, biological activities, and applications, while identifying gaps in scalability, stability, and safety assessments. Future directions emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration to harness PDENs' potential in combating metabolic disorders, enhancing food functionality, and advancing personalized nutrition strategies.
Keywords: Plant-derived exosome-like nanoparticles (PDENs), Food Nutrition and Health, bioactive components, stability, Functional Foods
Received: 13 Dec 2024; Accepted: 12 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Che, Wang and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ke Che, College of Food Engineering, Anhui Science and Technology University, Anhui, China
Hao Chen, School of Life and Health Sciences, Anhui Science and Technology University, Fengyang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.