In Vivo Assays to Study Angiogenesis and Targeting of Angiogenic Blood Vessels

4 In Vivo Assays to Study Angiogenesis and Targeting of Angiogenic Blood Vessels 

It is well recognized that in vitro angiogenesis assays can have clear advantages. However, the major drawback of all of these assays is that they require the endothelial cells to be removed from their natural microenvironment, which alters their physiological properties. To study angiogenesis in vivo, the most frequently used assay systems exploit chicken chorio-allanto-ic membrane (CAM) [28,60], the corneal pocket [61], transparent chamber preparations such as the dorsal skin fold chamber [62,63], the cheek pouch window [64] and polymer matrix implants [65,66]. 

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