Abstract
Angiogenesis is a well-coordinated physiological process that leads to new blood vessel formation. Physiologically, angiogenesis is more prominent during development and wound healing and its dysregulation drives or is related to several diseases, including cancer. The endothelial cells are the main regulators of the angiogenic process, and thus the angiogenic outcome is assessed based on the effect on endothelial cell functions. Several in vitro and in vivo techniques have been developed to assess the effect of various factors on angiogenesis. Compared to the in vivo techniques, the in vitro techniques are considered less physiologically relevant. This has been partially overcome by the development of 3-dimensional (3D) in vitro models, one of which is the spheroid assay or 3D sprouting assay that exploits the effect of the extracellular matrix to endothelial cell functions. This chapter focuses on the description of the spheroid assay and mentions the variations and potential applications this assay can have.
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References
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Acknowledgments
Effrosini Choleva is recipient of a PhD scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation in Greece (IKY) (Operational Program “Human Resources Development—Education and Lifelong Learning,” Partnership Agreement PA 2014-2020). Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) were isolated from human umbilical cords in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations from the Committee for Ethics in Research of the University of Patras or the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Institutional Review Board (IRB) under an IRB-approved protocol (IRB#A15-3891). Informed consent was obtained from all subjects.
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Zahra, F.T., Choleva, E., Sajib, M.S., Papadimitriou, E., Mikelis, C.M. (2019). In Vitro Spheroid Sprouting Assay of Angiogenesis. In: Vigetti, D., Theocharis, A.D. (eds) The Extracellular Matrix. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1952. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9133-4_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9133-4_17
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-9132-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-9133-4
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