I am trying to study the impact of my transgenic animals on the behaviour of smooth muscle cell or pericytes in arteriogenesis. Is there a good in vitro model to study arteriogenesis? I am not interested in angiogenesis in this case. Thanks.
Hi Junxi, I have also been interested in arteriogenesis. I found this reference, but it is very skimpy on the assay that they used:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804086/pdf/nihms116273.pdf
I didn't hunt down the original articles, but it seems that they excise blood vessels from animals and examined cell outgrowth.
Definitely not! Arteriogenesis is a very complex process involving laminar shaer stress as triggering force, resulting in activation of the endothelium and recruitment of distinct leukocytes which supply all kind of growth factors and cytokines to the growing vessel
Thanks both. My situation is I found no difference in angiogenesis assay/ aortic ring assay. No difference in vessel density (CD31) in hindlimb ischemia model, but increased percentage of big vessel (smooth muscle alpha-actin) among total vessels (CD31) along with a functional improvement in blood perfusion. I wonder if there is anything I can do to confirm that this is truly due to arteriogenesis. But it seems no good methods to test this. People just conclude as arteriogenesis if they see an increase in alpha-actin vessels in in vivo model.
Can you use EphB2 as an arterial marker to proof there is increased arteriogenesis?
Maybe a bit of a long shot but if possible you can cross your KO strain with a EphB2-reporter strain mouse and assess the artery formation in these mice.
Examples of this: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/full/nature08873.html
What type of animal model are you using? Ffemoral artery ligation or excison? Which type of animal? In which muscles do you find increase numbers of CD31 vessel density, in which increased percentage of SMactin positive cells? How did you measure perfusion. Before being able to answer your question, I need some further information. Arteriogenesis is defined as the growth of pre-existing arteriolar connections into functional arteries, i.e. natural bypasses.(seeEtymology by Faber et al 2014 ATVB) Do you find this? Have you ever measured the inner diameter of the growing vessel in occluded vs sham operated legs? Is there a difference in your control vs your experimental group?