Xandra O. Breakefield (photo), Ph.D., of Mass General Hospital and Harvard University, and a world-leading authority on primary brain tumors, as well as exosomes, presented the Friday morning plenary address to a packed ISEV audience and she did not disappoint. This was the second day of the 2015 annual meeting of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) (http://www.isevmeeting.org/) being held in Washington, DC, April 23-26. The title of Dr. Breakefield’s presentation was “The Evil Little Things about Cancer EVs As Infiltrators and Informants,” and it was extraordinarily illuminating about both the history of brain cancer research and the emergence of exosomes and/or extracellular vesicles (EVs) as perhaps major players in these grievous maladies. Her talk was briefly preceded by some organizational remarks from Dr. Ken Witwer, chair of the local organizing committee for the meeting, and then some short personal remarks from Dr. Breakefield’s long-time colleague Dr. Fred Hochberg, a prominent neurologist at MGH and Harvard. Dr. Hochberg highlighted Dr. Breakefield’s very special perspective that she can bring to her research as she is a professor in both the Clinical Neurology Department and the Clinical Radiology Department and has spent approximately 20 years focused on clinical medical problems and has an intimate familiarity with medical tools that could be used to examine possible molecular underpinnings of primary brain tumors. With her unusual background, she can bring to bear a remarkable synergy of molecular neuropathology, molecular genetics, and clinical familiarity on the difficult problems she confronts. Dr. Hochberg added that Dr.Login Or Register To Read Full Story