The power of imaging to understand extracellular vesicle biology in vivo

Journal article

We have shown the connection of hyaluronan synthesis activity with the enhanced shedding of extracellular vesicles, but detailed morphological analysis of those hyaluronan-induced EVs is still missing. In this study we utilized a comprehensive set of high-resolution imaging techniques to characterize in high detail the size and morphology of EVs originating from stable MCF7 breast cancer cell line and transiently transfected cells expressing GFP-HAS3. To avoid possible artefacts or loss of EVs resulting from the isolation process, special attention was paid to analysis of EVs in situ in monolayer and in 3D cultures. The results of this study show that GFP-HAS3 expressing MCF7 cells produce morphologically diverse EVs but also demonstrates the variation in results obtained with different experimental setup, which emphasizes the importance of comparison between different methods when interpreting the observations.Peer reviewe

Authors: Verweij, FJ; Balaj, L; Boulanger, CM; Carter, DRF; Compeer, EB

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Nature Methods
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 1013-1026
• Publication date: 2021-08-26
• DOI: 10.1038/s41592-021-01206-3
• EISSN: 1548-7105
• ISSN: 1548-7091
• Language: English
• Keywords: Materials science; Nanotechnology; Biodistribution; Biology; Biotechnology; Vesicle; Extracellular vesicle; Cell; Membrane; Microvesicles; Cell biology; Computational biology; Extracellular vesicles; Biochemistry; Biophysics; Live cell imaging; In vivo