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Nature Medicine 12, 171 - 172 (2006)
doi:10.1038/nm0206-171

Angiogenesis and inflammation face off

Beat A Imhof1 & Michel Aurrand-Lions1

  1. The authors are at the Centre Medicale Universitaire, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Geneva, Switzerland. e-mail: beat.imhof@medecine.unige.ch


Vascular endothelial cells respond to alarm signals of the body by angiogenesis or inflammation. The balance between these two responses is now pinned to two regulators of angiogenesis. Angiopoietin-1 dampens the inflammatory response, and angiopoietin-2 boosts it (pages 235–239).


A study in this issue brings together angiogenesis and inflammation, two processes long thought to involve few common molecular mechanisms. Fiedler et al.1 find that a well-known regulator of angiogenesis, angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2) can upregulate inflammatory responses—revealing a common signaling pathway for inflammation and angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels.

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