Morphological Change of Vascular Endothelial Cells and Extra Cellular Matrix Proteins

Angiogenesis, the formation of new capillaries, facilitates pathological processes including tumor growth, metastases, proliferative diabetic retinopathy and pannus formation in rheumatoid arthritis. It has been described that the angiogenesis is occurred through the series of events include endothelial cell protease production, migration and proliferation, tubule formation, and basement membrane incorporation. Within the last two decades, with in vivo assay systems, various kinds of growth factors were identified as angiogenic factors that promotes endothelial cell proliferation and migration. While, in vitro model for angiogenseis indicated that extra cellular matrix (ECM) proteins stimulated endothelial cells to roganize into capillary-like tubular network and suggested that the ECM proteins are involved in the tubule formation process of antiogenesis. Recent papers reported the identification of the specific receptors on endothelial cells involved in the ECM-induced capillary tube formation. This article will focus on papers describing the in vitro analyses for tube formation of endothelial cells.