Angiogenesis
This fundamental biological process is active throughout our lives. It occurs during embryonic development, wound healing, menstrual cycle, exercise-induced muscle growth, organ maintenance, and adaptation to changing conditions - Adriana Albini
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Angiogenesis: a curse or cure?
Angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels is essential during fetal development, female reproductive cycle, and tissue repair. In contrast, uncontrolled angiogenesis promotes the neoplastic disease and retinopathies, while inadequate angiogenesis can lead to coronary artery disease. A balance between pro-angiogenic and antiangiogenic growth factors and cytokines tightly controls angiogenesis. Considerable progress has been made in identifying these molecular components to develop angiogenesis based treatments. One of the most specific and critical regulators of angiogenesis is vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which regulates endothelial proliferation, permeability, and survival.
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In Focus: Angiogenesis
Harnessing the intricate mechanisms of angiogenesis has emerged as a promising avenue in regenerative medicine, offering the potential for innovative strategies and therapeutics to accelerate tissue repair and promote regeneration. For instance, by promoting the formation of functional blood vessels within engineered constructs, researchers could enhance the integration and survival of transplanted tissues, ultimately boosting their regenerative potential.
An Overview of Angiogenesis Research
The term angiogenesis denotes the growth of blood vessels from the existing vasculature. This process begins in utero and occurs throughout life, so that no metabolically active tissue in human body is further than a few hundred micrometers from blood capillaries, which is necessary for the exchange of nutrients and metabolites. In the 1970s, a surgeon Judah Folkman hypothesized that tumor growth depends on angiogenesis, thus the inhibition of this process could be a potential strategy for treating cancers. This groundbreaking prediction was a cornerstone of a new field of research, which resulted in antiangiogenic drugs that are used in modern clinical practice to treat malignant and vascular retinal diseases.
Angiogenesis in Tissue Engineering: As Nature Intended?
Indeed, it has quickly become evident that the diffusion of oxygen and supply of nutrients is a major limit to the size and complexity of tissue engineered constructs, and that integrating a network of blood vessels represents both a necessary and challenging step.
Angiogenesis: how cutting the blood supply became a tool against cancer
The observation that tumour cells appear able to call into existence an enhanced blood supply helped progress our knowledge about normal blood vessel formation, highlighted for the first time the importance of the tumour microenviroment, and ultimately led to an important new weapon against cancer
Angiogenesis: To branch or to expand?
Why is it important to understand how blood vessels decide to branch or expand in tumours? Drugs that inhibit angiogenesis have been developed to treat cancer and although they slow the progression of the disease, they rarely increase the lifespan of the patient.
What Is Angiogenesis?
Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels, an essential process that facilitates tissue growth and wound healing in living things. However, diseases like cancer can take advantage of angiogenesis and use it to grow and spread.
Angiogenesis: a curse or cure?
Angiogenesis fascinated the minds of many for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci speculated that the vasculature developed from the heart, like a tree from the seed and compared the sprouting roots with the capillary meshwork and the tree trunk with the aorta and arteries.
The Angiogenesis Foundation
The Angiogenesis Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization disrupting disease through angiogenesis, the process the body uses to grow new blood vessels.
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