Contact-Guided Angiogenesis and Tissue Engineering

It is clear that angiogenesis is a critical component in almost all forms of tissue repair aside from cartilage and some cartilage-like tissues. The most widely studied example is in dermal repair (1,2) but others include repair of bone, tendon, and peripheral nerve. New microvessels form as part of the early granulation tissue, through invasion of the initial fibrin-based clot. In dermal repair, the fine, apparently random network of vessels at this stage (2) is remodeled in the maturing scar tissue to give microvascular loops reaching from the deeper layers to the dermal-epidermal junction (3).