Scheme showing advantages and limitations of angiogenic assays. The yellow boxes refer to assays developed in mouse, and the sky-blue boxes refer to assays with human biomaterials. Pros and cons reflect the potential of these systems to study the angiogenic process and to validate pharmacologically or genetically the relevance of a certain pathway during angiogenesis. 3D, three-dimensional; BMDCs, bone marrow–derived cells; HTS, high-throughput screening; EC, endothelial cell.