Historical Perspectives of Research Trends on Extracellular Vesicles

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are ubiquitously existing membrane-derived natural nano-scaled phospholipid bilayer structures of heterogeneous particles released by all cells and found in all body fluids tested. EVs are devoid of functional nucleus but carry DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, and metabolites from donor cells to the recipient cells and participate in cell–cell communication and in many physiological activities. Such interesting cell-derived vesicles were not considered important before 1980s. A series of seminal works from Chargaff and West on blood coagulation and their due publications laid the foundation of EVs biology today. There were revolution in the developing methods and analytics to demonstrate EVs and establishment of functional roles in physiology. Overcoming several challenges like nomenclature, classifications, methods describing biogenesis, origin, composition, nature, associated functions, diseases and useful therapeutic and diagnostic applications, the research trends in the field of EVs remained very progressive and promising. This chapter describes these series of historical developments and trends in the field of EVs research.