Abstract
The UK Extracellular Vesicles (UKEV) Forum meetings were born of the realization that there were a number of UK laboratories studying extracellular vesicle biology and using similar techniques but without a regular national meeting dedicated to EVs at which to share their findings. This was compounded by the fact that many of these labs were working in different fields and thus networking and sharing of ideas and best practice was sometimes difficult. The first workshop was organized in 2013 by Dr Charlotte Lawson, under the auspices of the Society for Endocrinology, led to the founding of the UKEV Forum and the organization of a British Heart Foundation sponsored 1-day conference held in London in December 2014. Although growing in size every year, the central aims of these workshops have remained the same: to provide a forum for discussion and exchange of ideas, to allow young scientists to present their data in the form of short talks and poster presentations and to discuss their work with more established scientists in the field. Here we include the presented abstracts for the 2015 1-day conference hosted by Cardiff University. This meeting was attended by approximately 130 delegates throughout the United Kingdom, but also attended by delegates from Belgium, Netherlands, France, Ireland and other nations. The day composed of plenary presentations from Prof Matthias Belting, Lund University, Sweden and Dr Guillaume van Niel, Institut Curie, Paris together with 10 short presentations from submitted abstracts. The topics covered were broad, with sessions on Mechanisms of EV production, EVs in Infection, EVs in Cancer and in Blood and Characterizing EVs in Biological fluids. This hopefully gives a reflection of the range of EV-related studies being conducted currently in the UK. There were also 33 poster presentations equally broad in subject matter. The organizers are grateful to the Life Science Research Network Wales - a Welsh government-funding scheme that part-sponsored the conference. We are also grateful to commercial sponsors, and 3 paid-presentations are included in the abstracts. The UK EV Forum is expected to become an established annual event held at different Universities across the UK and continue to attract increasing delegate numbers and abstract submissions. We look forward to the next planned conference, which will be hosted by David Carter and his colleagues at Oxford Brookes University on 13th December 2016.