Biological nanoparticles (known as Extracellular Vesicles—EVs—and exosomes) are created by the trillions continuously in our bodies. They are excreted by cells as means of intercellular communication (good); and they are sent out by cancer cells looking for new beachheads (bad). They are everywhere—blood, tissue, urine, etc. Over the last 20 years or so they have increasingly been recognized as vectors of routine physiological functions in the body; and as critically important in a large, and growing, number of diseases, including devastating ones like Alzheimer’s and pancreatic cancer. Studying them is therefore important. But finding them, let alone characterizing them, is anything but easy. I will talk about the main technologies used for EV analysis, and show how we developed an instrument designed to push the envelope of what’s possible.

About Giacomo Vacca

Giacomo Vacca received his Physics BA/MA from Harvard University and his Applied Physics PhD from Stanford University, working with Nobel Prize winner Bob Laughlin. He has been awarded 80 patents to date. At Abbott Labs, Dr. Vacca invented and developed Laser Rastering, a radically innovative high-throughput approach to flow cytometry. In 2010 Dr. Vacca founded Kinetic River, a company dedicated to the development of advanced optical tools for particle analysis. Kinetic River’s customers include NIH–NCI, Stanford, UC Davis, the University of Kansas, SONY, Sartorius, and Italy’s National Research Council. Dr. Vacca is a senior member of both SPIE and Optica and a past Abbott Research Fellow, and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of BioPhotonics magazine.