This course aims to provide the basic knowledge about extracellular vesicles (EV) a generic term including exosomes, microvesicles, microparticles, ectosomes, oncosomes, prostasomes, and many others. It covers areas such as EV history, nomenclature, biogenesis, EV cargo as well as the release and uptake mechanisms, collection and processing prior to isolation, different isolation methods, characterization and quantification techniques. This course is divided into five modules. Module 1 is an introduction to the field and will cover the nomenclature and the history of EVs. Module 2 will focus on the biogenesis, release and uptake mechanisms of EVs as well as the different EV cargos (RNA, protein, lipids). In Module 3, we will focus on the collection and processing of cell culture media and body fluids such as blood, breast milk, cerebrospinal fluid and urine prior to isolation of EVs. Module 4 and 5 will present different isolation methods and characterization/quantification techniques, respectively. Here differential ultracentrifugation, size exclusion chromatography, density gradient, kit based precipitation, electron microscopy (EM), cryo-TEM, flow cytometry, atomic-force microscopy and nanoparticle tracking analysis will be presented. The recommended prerequisites are college-freshman-level biology and biochemistry. After a completed course you should be able to: + Discuss the nomenclature and subgroups of extracellular vesicles. + Describe the RNA, protein and lipid content of extracellular vesicles. + Describe the basic concepts about the most common isolation and characterization techniques and how these techniques are used in the EV field. + State the benefits and limitations of the most common isolation and characterization techniques for extracellular vesicles. + Explain the considerations that are important during the collection and isolation of EVs from different body fluid. + Describe the release and uptake mechanisms of extracellular vesicles All lectures are given in English. Each of the five modules will be followed by an exam. All exams will be in the format of multiple choice questions. The course is organized in collaboration between the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV), University of California Irvine (USA), University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and Pohang University of Science and Technology (South Korea).
TG
I found this a very informative course on the recent developments and the basics of the EV field.
AA
This is one of the wonderful courses any scientist or graduates trying to work on EVs must take. I enjoyed every bit of the course.
EF
This course was so amazing! It was so hard but I learned so much! Good job Cecilia Laaser!
MK
Awesome and unique course. Cleared my basics and introduced me to many new things. I especially loved knowing the different techniques used for EV research.
PS
It is amazing course ,I got to know much about extracellular vesicle and the quiz have also very good questions.
JV
OUTSTANDING COURSE ABOUT EXTRACELLULAR VESICLES, SPECIALLY ANALYZE THEM FROM BIOGENESIS TO PHENOTYPE.THANK YOU SO MUCH
AH
Loved the course and gained knowledge about this field. But I wish a discussion forum could be present. Also the lecture slides should be made available.
FL
It was a great experience, i was able to know more about it and apply it to my research.
DO
Excellent focused topic course. Upper division level and helps to have a good course in cell biology as a prerequisite..
FI
I loved this course! Very complete, well balanced and dynamic lectures. I learned a lot about EVs and can't wait to start working with them!
SP
Very nice nd inormative presentations. But few words in many presentations are not audible.
SC
Excellent course. A great overview plus a lot of detailed information that can't be found by reading the literature.
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Awesome and unique course. Cleared my basics and introduced me to many new things. I especially loved knowing the different techniques used for EV research.
The only problem I faced, has to do with the subtitles. They have lots of mismatches and mistakes. Nevertheless, the MOOC is undoubtedly great and pretty educational.
The most important benefit of this course is the fact that it exists. At present the course is mediocre to bad: its educational value is low: transcripts are disgusting, they are not proofread, omitted pats of sentences, inconsistent English, they almost completely obscure, disrupt the sense of the presentation. The course offers no slides. I see obvious negligence in preparation of many lectures (especially bad week three).
The target audience for the course is professional biologist that are comparable with arithmetic and elementary algebra and can easily use an internet browser.
The course contains numerous mistakes: in particular, the elementary formula Dr. Cecilia Lasser presented in her week 4 lecture on Differential Ultracentrifugation contains an error.
The lectures presented by non-native English speakers are very difficult to understand because of poor & inconsistent English.
Please, make the lecture slide available for your students.
Please, arrange a forum giving a possibility to ask a questions and get understanding of the material that remains unclear.
The lectures on electron microscopy were very good, - thank you, Johanna!
The lectures on AFM was the only one that was just excellent, - Thank you, Dr. Shivani Sharma.
Please, review the sequence of lectures: I think the week 5 material may be moved to week 3.
This technical course provides a comprehensive overview of the history in the understanding of, underlying introductory concepts of, and experimental techniques used in the study of extracellular vesicles. Quite challenging and perhaps not really for the casual learner, this course will be best appreciated by those with at least college-level grasp of (cell and molecular) biology, (bio)chemistry and/or physics. Those with exposure to the aforementioned fields may find this course useful in getting to know a highly-interesting emerging field or in considering a young research area (with an apparently energetic organized scientific community) to embark on. I am looking forward to take the second course in the series (Extracellular Vesicles in Health and Disease) which will deal with the biological context in which these entities work on.
I think the information was very well presented and delivered. Coming from a research student who did not have a large background in EV research prior to this course, this introduction was able to broaden my basic understanding on what extracellular vesicles are and then provided me with many ways to research them using the current research data. I also loved that this course was taught by scientists all around the world working in collaboration.
It's a great course, learnt a lot. It would have been great if the slides were provided too and addition of discussion forums would also help to cultivate what we have learnt better by exchanging views with fellow classmates. Thanks very much for providing the course.
I loved this course! Very complete, well balanced and dynamic lectures. I learned a lot about EVs and can't wait to start working with them!
Me ha gustado mucho este curso, ya que he aprendido muchos conocimientos sobre las vesículas extracelulares.
Some of the lecturers in this course were really fantastic! I also appreciate the format and structure, as well as the depth of topics covered, it made a lot of sense and was easy to follow. I learned a lot and got some great reference notes for my own research. A suggestion I have to improve the learning experience would be to make the slides accessible for download, so that students can take their notes directly onto slides and keep up better, rather than having to pause and rewind every few minutes.
Definitely got to learn quite a bit of possibly useful stuff (I'm very new to this) during the course. The quality of lectures varied on a spectrum from average to great, depending on the instructor for each topic. While some of them literally just read off the slides they prepared, others delivered the info with evident passion, which kept you attentive and interested. It's a mixed bag, but don't let that stop you - overall, the course experience was not bad.
The course I just completed is about Basics of Extracellular Vesicles, packed as a five-week program. To me personally, who has never read about EVs before, the course is helpful. It consists of short videos (10–30 minutes each) to explain many aspects of EVs, which are easy to follow. They use quizzes per week with a minimum score to achieve, encouraging us to read the material carefully. The course material is updated. The speakers mention new findings and recommendations about how to perform EV research with the most current acceptable standard, which majority are similar to the articles I have read for the summary table.
It was a great experience to learn from the top researchers from the field of Extracellular Vesicles. Hope this will greatly help in my research work and looking forward for kind cooperation from the course teachers if any hurdles in my research work. Thanks to the Course Coordinator, Cecilia Lasser and all the course teachers for the wonderful dissemination of the knowledge, competencies and skills.
I loved this course! I currently work in the liposome field and I was curious about learning EVs especially because its a young and growing field where they will be a lot of things to study. I liked the combination of scientists who got on board to share their knowledge in the field and I will definitely think of studying EVs in the future.
It's a good course to learn more about Extracellular vesicles. What I liked is that a lot of information was actually summarized and taught in a neat, uncomplicated manner. The resources provided were also quite helpful. All in all, it's a good course for those who are interested in this field. I definitely learnt a lot.
Enjoyed learning! Would like another to include updates on on exosomes that originate from adipose, Wharton's jelly, amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, hybrid bone marrow + Wharton's jelly, plants ... and if stem cell conditioned media do contain intact exosomes months (or years) after production. Thank you!
I loved the way the professors explained every concept and the presentations had all the important points to be noted. Images were used effectively and the transcripts were also useful. Quiz had all tricky questions and it was a good experience in finding out all the answers from the videos. Thank you
This course was really well organized and paced but packed full of a lot of really good information from great sources and leaders in the field. I really didn't know anything about exosomes before I started this course and now I feel like I can even teach the people in my own lab a few tricks.
Very good and well organized lecture slides! The organizers invested obviously a lot of effort and time in the preparation of the course. For people with advanced knowledge in cell biology, it might appear a bit easy at the beginning, but a lot to learn on the side of the techniques!
It is an excellent course in terms of content and the speakers. I wish you had a demo of experiments on a couple of topics. I gained immense knowledge on extracellular vesicles after attending this course. Thank you very much to all the speakers for sharing their valuable knowledge.
This is one of the best course I ever completed successfully. The course instructor's describe all the critical problems arise during the lab work. I believe by following this course one may get inspiration to start work in the field of Extracellular Vesicles.