Standardisation of concentration measurements of extracellular vesicles for medical diagnoses

Work package 2: Development of reference methods to characterise EV reference materials

Description

To make the reference materials developed in work package 1 (WP1) useful for calibration, it is necessary to traceable measure their physical properties. In WP2, methods will be developed to measure the average size, size distribution, concentration, refractive index and fluorescence intensity.

Artist impression

Artist impression of WP2 of METVES II
The front row in the figure shows how real vesicles and common reference materials look like if they were large enough to be seen directly. Real vesicles have a lower refractive index than polystyrene and polymethyl polymethacrylate particles, and therefore these particles appear "lighter". Hollow organosilica beads (HOBs) are one of the ideas to create particles which are simliarly “light” as real vesicles. Labelling particles with a fluorescent dye is a common way to make them easier to detect. The back row visualises HOBs with different levels of fluorescence intensity, which will also be measured accurately in WP 2. .