Research

Blood vessels are formed by vasculogenesis (differentiation of endothelial cell from progenitors) and angiogenesis (formation of blood vessels from pre-existing ones). The process of blood vessel formation is critical for embryonic development, growth and reproduction. Undesired or excessive vasculogenesis/angiogenesis contributes to numerous disorders including cancer, retinopathy... In cancer progression, in order to grow belong a size of few mm3, tumors should develop new blood supply. This neo-capillary formation also constitutes a route for dissemination of metastases. Preventing vasculogenesis/angiogenesis has thus emerged as an attractive therapy to combat disease and the search for novel modulators of these processes is receiving a lot of attention.

What we do

Please visit the pages  of the team by clicking on the pictures.

© GIGA	Ingrid Struman Lab Principal Investigator Leader of the team " Exosomes and cell communication in tumor communication" Click on the link below to access Ingrid's team Go to Ingrid's team webpage
© GIGA	Stephanie Herkenne Lab Principal Investigator Leader of the team " Mitochondria in cell communication" Click on the link below to access Stephanie's team Go to Stephanie's team webpage

Experimental tools in the Lab

In order to better understand the mechanism of angiogenesis and to evaluate the efficiency of new angiostatic factors we continuously develop new methods in the lab. Our field of expertise ranges from molecular biology level to complex in vivo studies such as tumor mice models. Examples of methods used in the lab are :

1. Use molecular biology technology to overexpress / repress expression of genes or microRNA in cells or mice.

2. Analysis of the functionality of drugs/gene in vitro and in vivo assays.

3. In vitro assays include : cell proliferation, apotosis, migration, 3D cell co-culture en endothelial and pericytes...

4 exosome research: we produce and modify the RNA content of exosomes to assess their functionality

5. In vivo models include :

• a. Retinal neovascularization model : to study the impact of drugs and genes/microRNAs...on  blood vessels formation.
• b. Several tumor mouse models are used to assess drugs/gene effects on tumoral angiogenesis. To better follow tumor progression in vivo we are using in vivo imaging system (Xenogen®).