Vesiclepedia: A Compendium for Extracellular Vesicles with Continuous Community Annotation

TLDR

Extracellular vesicles are membrane‑bound particles involved in intercellular communication, disease processes, and therapeutic delivery, generating extensive molecular data but facing challenges of outdated and inactive database links. The authors aim to establish Vesiclepedia as a continuously updated, community‑curated repository of EV molecular data. They created Vesiclepedia by manually curating lipid, RNA, and protein information from over 300 studies and launched a community annotation project to maintain and expand the database.

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membraneous vesicles released by a variety of cells into their microenvironment. Recent studies have elucidated the role of EVs in intercellular communication, pathogenesis, drug, vaccine and gene-vector delivery, and as possible reservoirs of biomarkers. These findings have generated immense interest, along with an exponential increase in molecular data pertaining to EVs. Here, we describe Vesiclepedia, a manually curated compendium of molecular data (lipid, RNA, and protein) identified in different classes of EVs from more than 300 independent studies published over the past several years. Even though databases are indispensable resources for the scientific community, recent studies have shown that more than 50% of the databases are not regularly updated. In addition, more than 20% of the database links are inactive. To prevent such database and link decay, we have initiated a continuous community annotation project with the active involvement of EV researchers. The EV research community can set a gold standard in data sharing with Vesiclepedia, which could evolve as a primary resource for the field.