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MSC&Exosome.Ed
Section 8 of 10 — Condition-specific literature

Traumatic Brain Injury / Acquired Brain Injury: Current Research

A reproducible, date-sorted summary of the 20 most recently PubMed-indexed studies on mesenchymal stem cell or exosome approaches to traumatic and acquired brain injury.

Educational information only — not medical or legal advice. This page is for general public education about FDA regulation of regenerative medicine. It does not diagnose, treat, or recommend treatment for any condition, and it is not a substitute for consulting a licensed physician about a medical question or a licensed attorney about a legal question. See the full disclaimer.
This is a literature summary, not a treatment claim. Listing a study here does not mean any MSC or exosome product is FDA-approved, safe, or effective for this condition. As of this draft, FDA has not approved any exosome product for any indication, and has not approved MSC-derived exosome therapy for this condition. This page describes what has been published in the peer-reviewed and preprint literature — it is not medical advice and is not a recommendation to pursue any specific treatment. Consult a licensed physician about any medical decision.
Search methodology. Studies were retrieved directly from the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database via the NCBI E-utilities API, using a combined search for mesenchymal stem cell OR exosome terms and the condition-specific terms below, sorted to surface the most recently indexed results. This is a mechanical, reproducible search — it is not a hand-curated "best evidence" list, and it was not filtered for study type or species (human vs. animal/preclinical); it includes randomized controlled trials, case reports, preclinical/animal studies, mechanistic laboratory studies, and narrative/systematic reviews. As a second pass, this list was manually screened for on-topic relevance to the condition named in the page title (removing results that matched the search terms technically but addressed a different anatomical site, an unrelated technology, or were not peer-reviewed), with each removed result backfilled by the next genuinely on-topic result from the same recency-sorted search. A reviewer should still independently assess study quality and peer-review status before citing any individual study as support for a specific claim.

Search terms used

(mesenchymal stem cell OR exosome) AND (traumatic brain injury OR acquired brain injury) — PubMed, sorted for recency, retrieved 2026/09/28 through 2026/05/27, 20 results of approximately 1,297 total matches for this search string.

Relevance cleanup applied. Two results that matched the search terms on PubMed's MeSH indexing but addressed spinal cord injury rather than TBI/ABI specifically (PMIDs 42518142 and 42450140) were removed and backfilled with the next genuinely on-topic, on-brain-injury results from the same recency-sorted search. A few remaining items are narrative reviews rather than primary research, and one addresses cerebral injury in a post-cardiac-arrest context rather than TBI directly — these are left in as reasonably on-topic but should still be individually assessed for relevance to a specific claim.

20 most recent PubMed-indexed results

  1. Oral connexin43-peptide-loaded milk extracellular vesicles mitigate lethal radiation injury while preserving tumour radiosensitivity.
    Marsh SR et al. — Cancer letters — 2026/09/28 — PMID: 42320876 · DOI: 10.1016/j.canlet.2026.218686
  2. Mesenchymal stem cell secretome attenuates disease-associated microglial activation and cognitive decline in TBI-associated neuroinflammation.
    Rasiah PK et al. — Neurochemistry international — 2026/09/01 — PMID: 42342036 · DOI: 10.1016/j.neuint.2026.106210
  3. Injectable Supramolecular Hydrogel Encapsulating CRISPR-Engineered MSCs Drives Synergistic Neuroprotection and Functional Recovery After Traumatic Brain Injury.
    Xu C et al. — Advanced healthcare materials — 2026/08/06 — PMID: 42563249 · DOI: 10.1002/adhm.71547
  4. Stem cell-derived exosome therapy for traumatic brain injury and its auditory complications.
    Zhang H et al. — Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie — 2026/08/01 — PMID: 42442305 · DOI: 10.1016/j.biopha.2026.119755
  5. Heat shock preconditioning potentiates the therapeutic efficacy of mesenchymal stem cells for traumatic brain injury.
    Huang J et al. — Biochemical and biophysical research communications — 2026/07/30 — PMID: 42161062 · DOI: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2026.153966
  6. Mesenchymal stem cell-derived secretome in traumatic brain injury: Stage-specific paracrine mechanisms and translational challenges.
    Huang J et al. — Experimental neurology — 2026/07/21 — PMID: 42480635 · DOI: 10.1016/j.expneurol.2026.115935
  7. Lyophilized platelet derived extracellular vesicles promote hemostasis and attenuate intracranial hemorrhage following traumatic brain injury.
    Trivedi A et al. — Journal of translational medicine — 2026/07/20 — PMID: 42472813 · DOI: 10.1186/s12967-026-08638-5
  8. Neurotrophic Factors in Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Neurodegeneration: A Convergent Pathophysiological and Translational Perspective.
    Shcheblykina OV et al. — Journal of integrative neuroscience — 2026/07/15 — PMID: 42530052 · DOI: 10.31083/JIN51543
  9. Mesenchymal stem cell therapy as adjunctive treatment in pediatric patients with severe acquired brain injury: a single-center retrospective case series.
    Uçmak H et al. — Frontiers in pediatrics — 2026/07/14 — PMID: 42523973 · DOI: 10.3389/fped.2026.1859885
  10. Dynamic Tuning of MSC-Based Scaffolds for Neurological Protection After Brain or CNS Injury.
    Slevin M et al. — Life (Basel, Switzerland) — 2026/07/13 — PMID: 42514227 · DOI: 10.3390/life16071157
  11. Unique expression pattern of circulating exosomal miRNA correlates with CNS pathology.
    Selmaj K et al. — Frontiers in immunology — 2026/07/09 — PMID: 42495628 · DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2026.1848236
  12. A Dural Extracellular Matrix Hydrogel with Neural Stem Cells Improves Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury in Mice.
    Lee-Reeves C et al. — ACS biomaterials science & engineering — 2026/07/02 — PMID: 42391517 · DOI: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.6c00319
  13. Harnessing Regulatory T Cells to Modulate Acute Brain Injury: From Mechanisms to Therapy.
    Ansari J et al. — Molecular neurobiology — 2026/06/29 — PMID: 42366311 · DOI: 10.1007/s12035-026-06011-7
  14. Alkaline loading of extracellular vesicles produced from human neural stem cell-derived neurospheres enables CNS drug delivery.
    Singh AM et al. — Scientific reports — 2026/06/18 — PMID: 42315580 · DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-58290-8
  15. Research trends and hotspots in Adipose-Derived Stem Cell applications for peripheral nerve regeneration from 2000 to 2025: a bibliometrics visualization study.
    Alves AS et al. — Brain & spine — 2026/06/15 — PMID: 42368699 · DOI: 10.1016/j.bas.2026.106124
  16. The Dual Roles of Extracellular Vesicle Subtypes in Regulating Traumatic Brain Injury.
    Zhang X et al. — International journal of molecular sciences — 2026/06/12 — PMID: 42353041 · DOI: 10.3390/ijms27125322
  17. Restoring neuroplasticity after CNS trauma: cell therapy approaches in spinal cord and traumatic brain injury.
    Palha AT et al. — Journal of translational medicine — 2026/06/12 — PMID: 42286677 · DOI: 10.1186/s12967-026-07933-5
  18. Mesenchymal stromal/stem cells for neurological disorders in humans: an evidence-mapped clinical review.
    Lepski G et al. — Frontiers in cellular neuroscience — 2026/06/10 — PMID: 42358489 · DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2026.1844360
  19. Assessment of hESC-IMRC-Exo for Cardiac and Cerebral Injuries Post-Cardiac Arrest Resuscitation: Safety, Pharmacokinetics, and Efficacy.
    Yang H et al. — Journal of cellular and molecular medicine — 2026/06/01 — PMID: 42363421 · DOI: 10.1111/jcmm.71264
  20. Translational stem cell therapy for neurodegeneration and CNS trauma: a focused review.
    Khosrofar R et al. — Molecular biology reports — 2026/05/27 — PMID: 42201594 · DOI: 10.1007/s11033-026-12011-6

Sources cited in this section

  1. PubMed E-utilities esearch query (TBI/ABI)
  2. Individual PMID links above each resolve to the study's PubMed record at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.