The 2015 annual meeting of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) (http://www.isevmeeting.org/) got off to a stunning start on Thursday morning (April 23) with back-to-back plenary presentations by 2013 Nobel Laureate James Rothman, Ph.D., from Yale University, and by NIH Director Francis Collins (photo), M.D., Ph.D., addressing an overflow crowd of more than 800 attendees at this, the largest-ever ISEV annual meeting. These two phenomenal speakers and scientists were followed directly by a 30-minute round-table discussion among the two speakers, Dr. Jan Lötvall, President of the ISEV, Dr. Xandra Breakefield of Harvard University, and Dr. Alan Sachs, the CSO at Thermo-Fischer Scientific. Dr. Rothman was the first to speak after brief introductions by Dr. Ken Witwer of Johns Hopkins, chair of the local organizing committee for the meeting, and Dr. Lötvall. Dr. Witwer was quick to thank all the meeting sponsors and especially to highlight the support that had been provided by both the NIH and the NSF, which supported the attendance of over 40 young investigators. Dr. Lötvall briefly summarized the history of the ISEV from an initial meeting in Canada in 2005 that was attended by ~20 people to a 200-person over-subscribed meeting in Paris in 2011, and finally to today in Washinton, DC, where official registration approached 800 and represented 60% growth over that for the meeting held in Sweden in 2012. Dr. Lötvall also highlighted the immense success that has already been achieved by the ISEV’s Journal of Extracellular Vesicles in its brief three years of existence. It is doing “amazingly well,” Dr. Lötvall noted, as journal editors await assignment of an impact factor. After these brief opening remarks, Dr.Login Or Register To Read Full Story