Advancing the frontier of extracellular vesicles research

The pursuit of standardization and rigor plays a pivotal role, especially in the research field of extracellular vesicles (EVs). Although there are meanwhile various attempts to achieve this, such as the MISEV guidelines issued by the ISEV (Welsh et al. 2024) and the establishment of various task force units for more specific issues, the handling and implementation are mostly up to the local researcher. Over the past decade, the various possibilities to isolate and characterize EVs from any biofluid have evolved considerably. Nevertheless, it remains challenging to define a gold standard or to maintain an appropriate overview. There is a steadily emerging interest in EVs and research questions related to them, and many research groups are courageously venturing into the EV field, such as the University Hospital Giessen-Marburg and its research focus on tumor biology and immunology with a strong interest in studying the so-called secretome in the tumor microenvironment.