From Plants to Patients: Advancing Cancer Therapy With Bioengineered Exosomes and AI-Driven Innovations

Cancer is a leading global cause of death, with complex pathogenesis and treatment challenges like poor selectivity, toxicity, and drug resistance. Nanotechnology offers transformative solutions, with plant-derived exosomes (EXOs) emerging as promising green nanomaterials for personalized cancer therapy because of their biocompatibility and minimal antigenicity, and eco-friendly production. This review discusses the potential of plant EXOs in cancer treatment, covering isolation methods, advantages over mammalian EXOs (e.g., stability, cost-effectiveness, and evasion of drug resistance mechanisms), and preclinical applications. For instance, ginger EXOs suppress colorectal cancer via cytokine modulation, grapefruit EXOs target brain tumors, and lemon EXOs induce apoptosis in triple-negative breast cancer. Plant EXOs also enhance drug delivery when loaded with chemotherapeutics, nucleic acids, or immunomodulators, improving precision and reducing off-target effects. Despite their promise, challenges remain in scalability, purity, long-term safety for non-oral routes, and clinical translation. Future research must optimize isolation techniques, clarify molecular mechanisms, and validate pharmacokinetics to advance clinical adoption. This review offers a complete examination of plant EXOs, including biogenesis, characterization, engineering strategies, anti-cancer mechanisms (e.g., apoptosis induction, immune modulation), and therapeutic applications. It also addresses hurdles like standardization and regulatory gaps while advocating interdisciplinary collaboration to bridge lab-to-clinic gaps. By harnessing plant EXOs' potential, this work highlights a path toward sustainable, targeted cancer therapies, urging further innovation to overcome existing barriers and realize their full clinical impact.