angiogenesis: a standalone construct

Judah Folkman's 1971 paper Tumor angiogenesis: Therapeutic implications established angiogenesis as a research construct in medicine, proposing that a solid tumour cannot grow beyond a tiny size unless it recruits its own new blood supply, and that blocking that vessel growth could itself be a treatment. Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels by sprouting and extension from blood vessels that are already present, the process by which an existing capillary network branches to bring oxygen and nutrients to tissue. (The word itself is older, commonly traced to the eighteenth-century anatomist John Hunter's descriptions of new vessel growth, and built from the Greek roots for vessel and for formation.) Werner Risau's 1997 review set out the cellular steps and separated angiogenesis from vasculogenesis, the earlier assembly of the very first vessels from precursor cells in the embryo, so that angiogenesis names specifically the growth of vessels from pre-existing vasculature. Peter Carmeliet and Rakesh Jain's 2000 review carried the construct well beyond cancer, documenting that the same process drives conditions ranging from diabetic eye disease to chronic inflammation, so that angiogenesis functions as one mechanism on which both healthy tissue repair and many diseases depend, and on which anti-angiogenic drugs are designed to act.[1][2][3]

Unit

A biological process: the sprouting of new capillaries from pre-existing blood vessels

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Quantified in tissue by microvessel density counts and vessel morphometry, and in the laboratory by assays such as the corneal micropocket, chick chorioallantoic membrane, and aortic ring assays