Coalescent angiogenesis

Angiogenesis is the process of the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing vascular structures, which is needed for oxygenation of - and providing nutrients to - expanding tissue.

These preferential flow pathways progressively enlarge by coalescence of capillaries and elimination of internal tissue pillars, in a fast time frame of hours.

An initially mesh-like capillary network is remodelled into a tree structure, while conserving vascular wall components and maintaining blood flow.

Coalescent angiogenesis, thus, describes the remodelling of an initial hemodynamically inefficient mesh structure, into a hierarchical tree structure that provides efficient convective transport, allowing for the rapid expansion of the vasculature with maintained blood supply and function during development.

In any case, it has been overlooked in the field of cancer research and it is currently only assumed to play a role in the formation of tumor vasculature.

Coalescent angiogenesis. In the capillary mesh, capillaries fuse to form a larger vessel to increase blood flow. This picture was provided by Bianca Nitzsche and Axel Pries, Berlin, Germany