The second day of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) annual meeting began with three simultaneous early-morning Meet the Experts sessions—one on “EV-Mediated Functional Delivery of Protein and Nucleic Acids,” one on “EV lipids and Lipidomics,” and the third on “Rigor and Reproducibility in EV Analysis.” These sessions are designed for experts to give brief opening talks and then to field questions from the audience. The session on “EV-Mediated Functional Delivery of Protein and Nucleic Acids” was chaired by Lucia Languino and featured the expert speakers Janusz Rak from McGill University and Raghu Kalluri from the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Rak spoke first and emphasized that, despite the unequivocal functional consequences on target cells, an understanding of the uptake mechanisms and post-cargo processing for EVs remains elusive. He gave examples illustrating that proteins (TF and EGFR) could be transferred via EVs to recipient cells and shown to have activity. He noted the work of Jan Lötvall demonstrating the transfer of RNA via exosomes and he also cited recent evidence that ds genomic DNA could be transferred by EVs. Dr. Kalluri then came forward and focused on the question of how efficiently EV phenomena observed in vitro occurs in vivo. He said that these phenomena are likely highly regulated and happen at a relatively low efficiency in vivo or we wouldn’t be what we are.Login Or Register To Read Full Story