The Vesicle Vibe

Vesicle Vibe is the AAEV Virtual Seminar Series created to offer an educational platform for junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students involved in EV research. Its mission is to provide a space for discussion on ongoing cutting edge EV research, and to reflect on the EV research field and its contribution to biology and medicine across various educational and experience levels, ranging from undergraduates to senior faculty members.

Join us every month for AAEV Virtual Seminar!

If you're interested in presenting or serving as a moderator, please email vesiclevibe@aaev.org.

Upcoming seminar:

The Vesicle Vibe Committee launches monthly seminars designed to support the educational and networking mission of the American Association for Extracellular Vesicles (AAEV). To further engage our community and broaden the range of topics, we are introducing a Special Seminar Session format. Each session will feature five short talks (10 minutes each), giving participants the opportunity to explore diverse subjects in a single event. These short talks offer an excellent platform to showcase your work, increase your visibility, and connect with fellow researchers. For attendees, it promises to be an engaging and informative experience.

Upcoming Special Seminar Sessions (held twice monthly): December 3rd & December 17th 2025

Dec 3rd:

Moderated by Paul Spezza, B.S., PhD Student, Kalluri Lab, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Free registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wrjFNKWSTLmMzgTdZ-MBhQ

Dec 17th:

Free registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_x6jpwJUjSmSTuHhb-LgudQ

Brianna Michelle Jones
Yaochao Zheng
Ruihan Chen/Deebie Symmes
Subhadip Ghatak
Ganesh Vilas Shelke
Kimberly Ann Spaulding

We warmly welcome your feedback and suggestions as we continue to grow and strengthen our community through these initiatives.

1. Ananth Kumar Kammala

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Exofection as a Therapeutic Modality: Restoring P-gp Activity via Trophoblast-Derived Extracellular Vesicles in Neuroinflammatory Disorders

2. Yong Tao
Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University
Therapeutic modulation of the vitreoretinal fibrosis microenvironment using engineered macrophage-derived extracellular vesicles

3. Ryan Walker Barrs
Clemson University
Conductive silicon biointerfaces augment vesicle-driven repair from cardiac organoids

4. Anran Shen
Southeast University School of Medicine
Motion dynamics of single extracellular vesicles within the fibrotic extracellular matrix and its impact on fibroblast activation

5. Koushik Debnath
University of Illinois Chicago
Nanoparticle-Mediated Tracking and Therapeutic Engineering of Autologous Extracellular Vesicles

6. Jacob Doon-Ralls
The Ohio State University
Tunable Self-Assembling Cellular Microarray for Single-Neutrophil Vital and Suicidal Extracellular Traps

Previous seminars:

Time: Wednesday, November 12th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)

Speaker: Edit Buzás, Ph.D.

Professor, Institute of Genetics, Cell and Immunobiology at Semmelweis University, Hungary

Talk: Hierarchical Vesicle Formation: EVs from EVs
Moderator: Subhadip Ghatak, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh

Edit Buzás, MD, PhD, DSc, is a Professor and Head of the Institute of Genetics, Cell and Immunobiology at Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary. Her earlier research, conducted at the University of Medicine of Debrecen (Hungary), Rush University (Chicago, IL, USA), and McGill University (Montreal, Canada), focused on autoimmunity.

Over the past decade, her research has centered on extracellular vesicles. Together with her team, she has made several fundamental discoveries in this field. She organized the second ISEV Workshop in 2013 and served as Chair of ISEV2016 in Rotterdam. She has also served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles. In 2020, she received the ISEV Special Achievement Award. From 2022 to 2024, she was President of ISEV. She currently leads the Global EV Network of International EV Societies. Dr. Buzás is a member of both the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the European Academy, and is President of the Hungarian Society for Immunology.

Time: Wednesday, October 15th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)

Speaker: Hector Peinado, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas - CNIO

Talk: Beyond the premetastatic niche: EV-inspired strategies to boost immunotherapy
Moderator: Mahmud Hussain

Dr. Peinado is the Group Leader of the Laboratory of Microenvironment and Metastasis at CNB (Spanish Research Council). His laboratory is investigating the role of tumor-secreted extracellular vesicles in pre-metastatic niche formation, their potential applications in liquid biopsies and the influence of the microenvironment in metastatic dissemination. His contributions to the field have been recognized with the 1st ASEICA Young Investigator, Pfizer, and "Doctores Diz Pintado" awards. He has been honored as a FERO, Marie Curie-WHRI-Academy and BBVA Leonardo Fellow. Dr. Peinado has published 122 works since 2003 and he was listed in 2022 among the top 2% of most cited scientists worldwide, according to the Stanford University ranking based on Scopus.

Time: Wednesday, September 17th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)

Speaker: Mengying Hu， Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University

Talk: Tumor immunogenicity amplified by T cell extracellular vesicles — The role of EV-DNA

Moderator: Kaiyue Zhang, Columbia University

Mengying Hu, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of the Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy at The Ohio State University (OSU). She is an NCATS K12 Scholar (2025-2027) and member of the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center. She received PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a postdoc training on extracellular vesicle (EV) biology and immuno-oncology in Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Hu’s multidisciplinary research group (https://www.hoo-lab.com) is dedicated to elucidating the functions and mechanisms of immune cell-derived EVs, with a particular emphasis on the role of EV-associated DNA in immune modulation. In parallel, her lab explores both synthetic and naturally occurring nanoparticles for therapeutic applications. A major focus includes the design and optimization of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for the targeted delivery of nucleic acids—such as mRNA, siRNA, and plasmid DNA—to specific disease sites. Ultimately, her research aims to guide the rational design of next-generation non-viral gene therapies and EV-based diagnostic and prognostic tools.

Time: Wednesday, August 13th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)

Speaker: Cristina Mas Bargues， Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, University of Valencia, Spain

Talk: Extracellular Vesicle Redox Modulation in Aging

Moderator: Karolina Dorosz, The University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)

Dr. Cristina Mas-Bargues focuses her research on aging and regenerative medicine. Her work explores how oxidative stress contributes to cellular senescence, inflammation, and tissue dysfunction, with the ultimate goal of identifying new strategies to promote healthy aging. She is particularly interested in the regenerative potential of extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from stem cells, investigating their role as modulators of redox balance and intercellular communication. She has developed her work through predoctoral, postdoctoral, and mobility fellowships at institutions such as the University of Valencia, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. With over 60 publications in journals like Science Advances, Redox Biology, and Free Radical Biology & Medicine, her work has been widely cited, earning her a Hirsch index of 22. Cristina actively shares her findings through national and international conferences and has received several recognitions, including the "Young Investigator Award" (SFRR-I 2021) and "The Future of Redox Biology Award" (SFRR-E 2022). She currently serves on the Editorial Boards of Redox Experimental Medicine, Antioxidants, and IJMS, and is a member of the SFRR-E Early Career Researchers subcommittee. She is also the principal investigator of two funded R+D+i projects supporting emerging research groups.

Time: Wednesday, July 16th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)

Speaker: Kate McAndrews, Ph. D.

Assistant Professor, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Talk: CD9+ extracellular vesicles from cancer cells specifically instigate generation of myeloid-derived suppressor cells to promote pancreas cancer that is recalcitrant to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy

Moderator: Kevin Li, Columbia University (New York, NY)

Dr. Kate McAndrews, Ph.D. completed her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nevada Reno in 2010. She completed her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Dr. Michelle Dawson in 2015, where she trained as a matrix bioengineer with a specific focus on understanding the influence of molecular and mechanical cues provided by the microenvironment on mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) function in tissue regeneration and cancer progression. Dr. McAndrews joined the laboratory of Dr. Raghu Kalluri at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for her postdoctoral training in 2015. Her work has focused on novel biology of extracellular vesicles (EVs)/exosomes, their role in cancer, and their utility as therapeutic vehicles as well as the functional role of fibroblasts in tissue repair and cancer. Dr. McAndrews’s postdoctoral work was supported by an Ergon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and received an NIH K22 award to support her work on extracellular vesicles in pancreatic cancer in 2024. Recently, she has developed an EV-based vaccine platform for infectious disease and cancer (Luo, McAndrews, et al. Journal of Controlled Release 2024) and identified a role for T cell-mediated clearance of cancer cells in the efficacy of KRAS inhibition (Mahadevan, McAndrews, et al. Cancer Cell 2023, McAndrews et al. Provisionally accepted at Science Translational Medicine, McAndrews et al. Under revision). She is using novel GEMMs to unravel the role of EVs/exosomes in pancreatic cancer progression and metastasis. Such models have enabled the evaluation of endogenous EV exchange and functional interrogation of EV transfer in spontaneously occurring cancer for the first time. A preferential accumulation of endogenously released cancer cell derived CD9 + EVs in fibroblasts and macrophages was observed, which leads to reprogramming of fibroblasts and metabolic rewiring of macrophages to impact tumor progression (McAndrews et al. In submission process). During her fellowship period, Dr. McAndrews has published 16 first author and 21 co-author peer-reviewed studies, with 5 first author and two co-author manuscripts currently under review and in the submission process. Currently, her total citations are 5369 and her h-index is 27.

Time: Wednesday, June 18th, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Central Time (10:00 AM-11:00 AM EST)

Speaker: Pua, Heather H, M.D., Ph. D.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Talk: T cell Extracellular Vesicles: Communicating Signals in Tissue Inflammation.

Moderator: Paul Spezza, B.S.– Kalluri Lab at MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, TX)

Dr. Heather Pua is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her research focuses on how extracellular vesicles and small noncoding RNAs regulate immune responses and tissue inflammation, with a special emphasis on T cell driven lung inflammation and asthma. Dr. Pua earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology and her M.D./Ph.D. in Immunology from Duke University, where she identified a role for autophagy in naive T cell survival. She then completed her residency in Anatomic Pathology, a clinical fellowship in Molecular Genetic Pathology, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. During her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Ansel, she studied the role of miRNAs in allergic inflammation in the lung.
In 2017, Dr. Pua joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University, where she established her own laboratory. Utilizing techniques including molecular biology, cellular immunology, and vesicle flow cytometry, her team aims to uncover novel mechanisms of EV-mediated immune regulation and identify new potential therapeutic targets for chronic inflammatory diseases. Dr. Pua is a member of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology, and Inflammation (VI4) and the and Verbilt Center for Immunobiology (VCI) and is committed to the outreach of immunology in science.

Time: Wednesday, May 14th, 11:00 am –12:00 pm CT (12 pm- 1:00 pm EST)

Speaker: Raghu Kalluri, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Talk: Future of Exosomes

Moderator: Karolina Dorosz

Dr. Raghu Kalluri is the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He currently holds the Frederick F. Becker Distinguished University Chair of Cancer Research.
His research program is focused on innovative research to unravel how cells and their environment communicate to maintain organ health, and how such communication networks are altered in cancer and other diseases. Current areas of research in the Kalluri laboratory include cancer biology and metastasis, tumor microenvironment, tissue injury and regeneration and the biology of exosomes in health and disease. We investigate the biology of cancer with an implicit mission to develop new strategies for diagnosis and therapy. Dr. Kalluri has been recognized for his excellence in research and teaching and the Kalluri laboratory is a fertile training ground for the next generation of scientists and physician-scientists.