The process of new blood vessel formation, angiogenesis, is of fundamental importance in many physiological and pathological processes. Indeed, the successful integration of a tissue-engineered graft into the host tissue is crucially dependant on the extent of angiogenesis that occurs. Angiogenesis is a complex process involving changes in the phenotype expressed by endothelial cells, extracellular matrix remodelling, capillary differentiation and anastomosis. The principal objective of this generic research is to devise methods to stimulate (or inhibit) angiogenesis in the graft-host tissue complex. A number of approaches will be employed, including (i) developing and optimising procedures to incorporate specific regulators of angiogenesis into newly designed scaffolds, (ii) optimising conditions for the isolation and culture of endothelial progenitors from peripheral blood (in collaboration with Research Theme 3), and (iii) using the newly-developed adenobody approach to increase the ‘angiogenic potential’ of vascular cells before implantation (in collaboration with Generic Research).