Extracellular Vesicle

**Semantic type:** Body Part, Organ, or Organ Component

**Definition:** Bilayer membrane fragments present in the blood plasma that are released by different cell types upon activation or death. Extracellular vesicles are usually classified as either exosomes (formed by the membranes of intracellular compartments, 50-100 nm in diameter) and ectosomes (also called microparticles or microvesicles, formed from plasma membrane, 100-1000 nm in diameter).

**Synonyms:** - Plasma Extracellular Vesicle