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Updated: Jun 15, 2026

Freeze-Fracture Electron Microscopy for Extracellular Vesicle Analysis
Published on: September 16, 2022
Non-reversible tissue fixation retains extracellular vesicles for in situ imaging
Mrinali P Gupta1, Sangeetha Tandalam1, Shariss Ostrager1
1Department of Ophthalmology and Margaret M. Dyson Vision Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
Abstract:
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are secreted nanosized particles with many biological functions and pathological associations. The inability to image EVs in fixed tissues has been a major limitation to understanding their role in healthy and diseased tissue microenvironments. Here, we show that crosslinking mammalian tissues with formaldehyde results in significant EV loss, which can be prevented by additional fixation with 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) for visualization of EVs in a range of normal and cancer tissues.

