Abstract Higher organisms have a cardiovascular circulatory system with blood vessels to supply vital nutrients and oxygen to distant tissues. It is therefore not surprising that vascular disorders are leading causes of mortality. Understanding how new blood vessels form, creates opportunities to cure these life-threatening diseases. After birth, growth of blood vessels mainly occurs via two distinct mechanisms depending on the initial trigger: angiogenesis (referred here as capillary sprouting) is induced primarily by hypoxia, whereas arteriogenesis (referred here as the rapid enlargement of pre-existing collateral arteries, induced by vascular occlusion) is mainly driven by fluid shear stress. Arteriogenesis allows conductance of much larger volumes of blood per unit of time than does the increase in capillary density during angiogenesis. Notwithstanding these major differences, angiogenesis and arteriogenesis share a number of underlying mechanisms, e.g. the involvement of growth factor signalling. This chapter highlights the cellular and molecular events driving the two processes and discusses the therapeutic potential of targeting angiogenesis in cancer and arteriogenesis in cardiovascular diseases.
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