An immunoradiometric assay for von Willebrand factor antigen to assess angiogenesis

A method of determining the degree of vascularization of tissues would be of great value in dermatological research such as the investigation of neoangiogenesis in wounds and in the study of the vascular abnormality in psoriasis. We describe an adaptation of an immunoradiometric assay (IRMA) for von Willebrand factor antigen for this purpose. The results show that in endothelial cells in culture there was a good relationship between the number of cells and von Willebrand factor antigen measured by the IRMA. The relationships between the numbers of endothelial cells in biopsies of normal and healing wound skin as estimated by the histometric technique and the IRMA are less good (r = 0.45 and 0.32, respectively) but suggest that there is a positive and proportionate variation. There is a much stronger relationship (r = 0.79) between the biochemical and histometric methods in psoriatic skin.