Fig. 1

Schematic of different EV subpopulations. Different EV subtypes have different sizes and secretion pathways. Exosomes are generated from MVBs, and can carry protein and mRNAs cargo for cell-cell communication. Based on their sizes, exosomes can further characterized to small exosomes and large exosomes. Exomeres are nanoparticles with size smaller than 50 nm and carrying proteins involving metabolism; their biological role remains unknown. Microvesicles shed from the cell surface are generally larger than exosomes, and can also ferry cargos between cells. Oncosomes are larger EVs that were generated from cancer cells by budding or membrane scission, and can deliver cancer metastasis-related cargo to facilitate tumor cell invasion. Migrasomes are generated after cells migration with its function yet to be identified