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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013 was recently awarded jointly to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells".

The work being carried out in European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) project HLT02 ‘Metrological characterisation of micro-vesicles from body fluids as non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers’ (MetVes) has been highlighted in connection with this Nobel Prize by the board of the International Society on Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV). In a quote by a member of the ISEV board, Dr Chris Gardiner from the University of Oxford, stated that the Nobel Prize “highlighted the importance of vesicles” and that “currently the lack of suitable calibration materials and standardisation between methods makes it almost impossible to compare measurements from different laboratories or even results obtained from the same laboratory but using different techniques”.

The aim of the HLT02 MetVes project is to develop reliable, comparable and quantitative analysis of vesicles in biological fluids. The detection of vesicles using metrological technologies will provide key information about their presence in human body fluids in health and disease. This information is a prerequisite for calibrating currently used detection methodologies and will enable the comparison of results between methodologies and laboratories. Thus JRP HLT02 will be essential in supporting the use of and establishing information for the detection of vesicles as relevant biomarkers of health and disease. Reference materials, selected and tested by HLT02 METVES, will be distributed and measured within the Scientific Standardization Committee on Vascular Biology of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis early 2014.

For more information on HLT02 MetVes go to http://www.euramet.org/index.php?id=emrp_call_2011#c10983

For more information on the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013 please visit http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2013/