The final day of the highly successful International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) 2017 Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, began with three simultaneous early-morning experts workshop sessions on “ExRNA Progress and Potential,” “EV Track,” and “Demonstration Workshop Analysis with FunRich.” The exRNA session was moderated by Louise Laurent, MD, PhD, from UC-San Diego, and included expert panel members, Aleksandar Milosavljevic, PhD, from Baylor College of Medicine, Kendall Jennsen, PhD, from TGen, and Jeffrey Franklin, PhD, from Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The sessions were designed to foster open interaction between the audience and the expert panelists, and Dr. Laurent framed the discussion by suggesting a focus on where we are now and what we need to make progress going forward. She noted that standardization is an ongoing effort with variability in methods, variability in reproducibility, and the existence of intrinsic, systematic biases in techniques that are reproducible. She indicated that standardization of collection, processing, and analytical methods is needed and standards that are developed need to be made available to the community. Dr. Milosavljevic remarked on the value of pipelines used by the exRNA Consortium and data sharing carried out through the exRNA Atlas (http://exrna-atlas.org/). Dr. Laurent mentioned the needs for single vesicle analysis and improved methods for vesicle enumeration and sizing. One audience member raised the question of methods to isolate exRNA from different body fluids and another contributed information on an effort undertaken in Australia to address some of the method standardization issues.Login Or Register To Read Full Story