Endothelial cell migration and chemotaxis in angiogenesis

Our goal has been to provide a quantitative analysis of the random motility and chemotaxis of microvessel endothelial cells (MEC) in order to understand the role of these functions in the development of new capillaries. A major difference of our work from previous investigations has been our use of mathematical analysis to interpret experimental results, and to relate in vitro migration measurements to in vivo angiogenesis observations. In this paper we present some of our methods and their rationale, with recent results from both experiment and mathematical models.