The International Society of Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) has updated their guidelines ‘Minimal Information for Studies of Extracellular Vesicles’ from 2014

Four years after the first release of “Minimal Information for Studies of Extracellular Vesicles’ (MISEV2014), ISEV has now updated these guidelines based on the additional knowledge gained over the last four years. In order to reach the highest possible consensus on these recommendations, a large group of ISEV scientists was involved through a community outreach (MISEV2018 Survey). The driving forces, Clotilde Théry and Kenneth Witwer did a formidable job and put a lot of effort into this manuscript, including the preparation and analysis of the online surveys.

The MISEV2018 paper provides a number of criteria that helps researchers to guide them in discriminating EV from non-EV components. These include recommendations regarding harvesting EVs from cell culture conditioned media or biological fluids. Furthermore, considerations for EV separation and concentration are addressed as well as important steps for proper EV characterization. A strong focus is on aspects regarding functional studies of EVs since over-interpretation or classical artefacts when analysing EV-functions is to be avoided by all means. The MISEV2018 guidelines include tables and outlines of suggested protocols and steps to follow to document specific EV-associated functional activities. The article also provides a very handy checklist summarising the major aspects to follow in EV science, giving a quick and global overview of the key points.

In addition to guidelines, transparent reporting of experimental parameters is a key step for development of research standards, in particular in an interdisciplinary field like EV-research. Hence, An Hendrix and colleagues developed the community-driven database EV-TRACK, which collects experimental parameters of EV studies. We encourage EV scientists to annotate their studies to this database, which may also help in the course of the reviewing process of a study.

Of course, the MISEV guidelines and EV-TRACK cannot cover all aspects of experimental and reporting requirements in detail, but they do provide a very good basis. It is in the interest of the whole EV research community to reach a wide acceptance and implementation of these recommendations. Thus, the GSEV strongly encourages to follow the MISEV recommendations in EV research, in order to further enhance standardisation and reproducibility in EV science.

The information is provided in a very condensed manner and might be challenging to read, especially for a scientist just starting to approach the EV field. Thus, members from the GSEV Research Standards Working Group as well as GSEV board members will be happy to discuss details and provide more elaborate explanations and support if needed. Please do not hesitate to contact us!