METVES II project started: Reference materials for characterization of extracellular vesicles

Leading metrology and medical research institutes as well as industry have started research on new tools to enable standardization of concentration measurements of cell-specific EVs in human body fluids by developing reference materials and related reference measurement methods. The EU-funded consortium is comprised of VSL B.V., Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -prüfung, Laboratoire national de métrologie et d'essais, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Teknologian tutkimuskeskus VTT Oy, Academisch Medisch Centrum bij de Universiteit van Amsterdam, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Helsingin Yliopisto, LGC Limited, Exometry B.V., BD Switzerland Sàrl and PolyAn.

The METVES II project (http://www.metves.eu/) has received funding from the European Union to enable standardization of concentration measurements of cell-specific EVs in human body fluids by developing reference materials and related reference measurement methods. The consortium is comprised of leading European metrology institutes, medical research institutes and industry.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are cell-derived particles in body fluids, which have excellent potential as next-generation biomarkers for early diagnosis of common diseases, such as cancer and thrombosis. This project aims to tap the clinical potential of EVs by developing traceable measurements of number concentration, size distribution, refractive index (RI) and fluorescence intensity of cell-specific EVs in human blood and urine. The project will develop synthetic reference materials with physical properties resembling EVs, ready-to-use biological test samples, and instrumentation and procedures to standardize EV measurements in clinical laboratories, which will be evaluated in an inter-laboratory comparison study.

Contact

For further information about this project please contact:

Dr. Uwe Schedler, Geschäftsführer PolyAn GmbH
Email: mail@poly-an.de

About PolyAn

PolyAn is a nanotechnology company specialized in the modification of surfaces using Molecular Surface Engineering (MSE). Since 1996 PolyAn develops and manufactures consumables for applications that require high signal-to-noise ratios. Our products include supports for microarrays, fluorescence encoded microparticles and calibration tools for fluorescence imaging systems.