Fig. 2

Timeline of key discoveries in extracellular vesicle research. Microvesicles were first reported in the 1960’s, and exosomes in the 1980’s. The physiological role of EVs in antigen presentation and cell–cell communication were first reported in the 1990’s and 2000’s respectively. From the late 2000’s onwards, several key works have highlighted the role of tumour EVs in promoting cancer growth and metastasis, and highlighted their potential utility as biomarkers