The 2nd symposium of the Italian Society of Extracellular Vesicles (EVITA) was held in person in Barga (LU) on the 20th-22th September 2021. The event inspired all the participants with three days full of EV science. Innovative studies and illuminating lectures from world-renowned scientists offered many opportunities for idea exchange and networking.

Giorgia Adamo, Pamela Santonicola successfully presented interesting talks together in which they introduced nanoalgosomes as extracellular vesicles produced by a new natural source, microalgae. They explained that this source is sustainable, renewable, and easy to scale. They also described how they selected the best strains starting from a screening done on 18 different microalgae species (Picciotto et al, 2021) and focused on the description of the nanogosomes produced by T. Chuii. (Adamo et al, 2021).

They emphasized that the nanoalgosomes have biochemical-physical characteristics typical of Evs and are not toxic for the cells. After the setting up of EV staining using different lipophilic probes, they observed that they are internalized by the cells in an active and dose-dependent manner over time, acting as antioxidants. These are ongoing microfluidics, loading, and functionalization studies with nucleic acids proteins and small drugs and we are evaluating proteomic and lypidomic profiles, and in vivo studies on c elegans and mice. Finally, they considered that the nanoalgosomes membrane in the contest of the BOW project (and umbrella project of VES4US).

Furthermore, Samuele Raccosta presented a poster about “Extracellular vesicles from microalgae: biophysical/biomechanical characterization”, and Angela Paterna presented another one about “A renewable scale bioprocess: extracellular vesicles to microalgae”.