Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
Pathological angiogenesis is a hallmark of various ischemic diseases (insufficient vessel growth) but also of cancer and metastasis, inflammatory diseases, blindness, psoriasis or arthritis (excessive angiogenesis). In response to ischemia (reduced blood flow and oxygen supply), new blood vessels form in order to compensate for the lack of perfusion. This natural process could protect them from the consequences of atherosclerotic diseases (myocardial angina, infarction, hindlimb arteriopathy or stroke). However, neovessel formation is altered in many patients. A better understanding of the mechanisms of functional vessel formation is a pre-requisite to improving the treatment of ischemic pathologies. To this end, it is essential to create easily accessible animal models in which vessel formation can be both manipulated and studied. In this review, we will describe different angiogenic mouse models in the context of cardiovascular diseases, either in an ischemic context (hindlimb ischemia, heart ischemia, skin model) or in a non-ischemic context (plug and eye assay, wound healing, ovarian model). We will also discuss quantitative techniques for assessing angiogenesis in these assays.