Chapter 8. Proteomic mapping of the vascular endothelium in vivo for vascular targeting

The mapping and characterization of the vasculature using proteomics offers the opportunity to better understand the steps and molecular mechanisms involved in vascular development, and angiogenesis in particular. Proteomics has many key advantages over genomics, especially in directly determining protein expression. Such an approach offers researchers the opportunity to discover the proteins that make up the vasculature in an a priori manner facilitating the generation of hypothesis which can subsequently be validated by other methods. This chapter focuses on proteomic principles and methods, with a particular focus on their applications to characterizing the vascular endothelium (both tumor and normal), as it exists in vivo.