At the end of Dr. Gary Ruvkun’s plenary address, Dr. Jan Lötvall, President of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) (http://www.isevmeeting.org/), stepped forward to chair the closing ceremony of this “exciting and most interesting” 2015 annual ISEV meeting. First, Dr. Lötvall introduced Andy Hill, Ph.D., Professor and Department Head at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Sciences at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, to present a “wrap-up” of the scientific research presented at the meeting. Dr. Hill highlighted a number of areas of keen interest. These included EV biogenesis, isolation and characterization of EVs/exosomes, vesicle labeling, imaging (including super-resolution, confocal, intravital, and EM microscopy), nomenclature, and transcriptomics/RNA analysis. He also emphasized the great success of this year’s newly added “Meet the Experts” sessions. Next, Dr. Lötvall introduced Louise Laurent, M.D., Ph.D., an Assistant Professor, an obstetrician specializing in high-risk pregnancies, and a prominent EV researcher from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), to give a wrap-up of the meeting from a clinical perspective. Dr. Laurent began by outlining where we are today, which she said is at the stage of discovering biomarkers and determining mechanisms, and where we are going in the future, which she said is in the direction of identifying druggable targets that might be EV-based and enable further development of personalized medicine. She emphasized that clinical progress in this area will depend critically on collaborations and cross-talk to speed advances. Communication needs to be “reciprocal,” she said, not “sequential.” Dr. Laurent also highlighted the needs for increased standardization and concern for reproducibility.Login Or Register To Read Full Story