Minimal experimental requirements for definition of extracellular vesicles and their functions: a position statement from the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles

Abstract

Secreted membrane‐enclosed vesicles, collectively called extracellular vesicles (EVs), which include exosomes, ectosomes, microvesicles, microparticles, apoptotic bodies and other EV subsets, encompass a very rapidly growing scientific field in biology and medicine. Importantly, it is currently technically challenging to obtain a totally pure EV fraction free from non‐vesicular components for functional studies, and therefore there is a need to establish guidelines for analyses of these vesicles and reporting of scientific studies on EV biology. Here, the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) provides researchers with a minimal set of biochemical, biophysical and functional standards that should be used to attribute any specific biological cargo or functions to EVs.

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Affiliated Institutions

• University of Gothenburg SE
• Pohang University of Science and Technology KR
• The University of Melbourne AU
• Utrecht University NL
• Inserm FR
• Johns Hopkins Medicine US
• Institut Curie FR
• University of California, San Diego US
• Bioinformatics Institute SG
• Semmelweis University HU
• La Trobe University AU
• Brown University US
• Hiroshima University JP
• University of Oxford GB
• Johns Hopkins University US
• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai US
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center US

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