Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 19, 2025

Monitoring Functionality and Morphology of Vasculature Recruited by Factors Secreted by Fast-growing Tumor-generating Cells
Published on: November 23, 2014
Ephrin-B2-expressing natural killer cells induce angiogenesis
Katharine G Wolf1, Emily B Crawford1, Nora M Wartan1
1Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, North Chicago, IL.
Background:
Therapeutic angiogenesis aims to induce new blood vessel growth in ischemic tissues; however, previous clinical trials have had limited success. Studies of uterine angiogenesis revealed a specialized subset of natural killer (NK) cells, called uterine NK (uNK) cells, which have unique proangiogenic abilities.
Methods:
We show that uNK cells in mice express ephrin-B2, a regulator of angiogenesis, to induce tubule formation in an ex vivo coculture tubule formation assay. We next induced the expression of ephrin-B2 by splenic NK (sNK) cells harvested from male mice.
Results:
We showed that induced NK (iNK) cells can also instruct endothelial cells to form tubules using ephrin-B2.
Conclusions:
We concluded that Ephrin-B2 is a marker of proangiogenic uNK cells and that a proangiogenic phenotype characterized by ephrin-B2 can be induced in sNK cells to induce therapeutic angiogenesis.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Regulation of Angiogenesis and Blood Supply
Role of Ephrin-Eph Signalling in Intestinal Stem Cell Renewal
Mechanism of Angiogenesis
Mitogens and the Cell Cycle

