Table 1.

Different types of extracellular vesicles.

Characteristics	Exosomes	Microvesicles	Apoptotic bodies
Size	30–100 ​nm [7]	50–1000 ​nm [13]	1–5000 ​nm [13]
Morphology	Cup-shaped [14]	Heterogeneous [14]	Heterogeneous [14]
Origin	Luminal budding into multivesicular bodies (MVBs); release by fusion of MVBs with the cell membrane [13]	Budding off the plasma membrane [15]	Outward blebbing of the cell membrane [13]
Composition	Coding RNA, noncoding RNA, proteins, antigen presentation molecules, DNA [10,14]	miRNA, mRNA, proteins, lipids, cytosol [15]	Proteins, lipids, DNA, rRNA, cytosol [15]