IN VITRO METHOD OF EVALUATING THE BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY OF COMPOUNDS ON A LARGE SCALE IN SUITABLE PHYSIOLOGICAL OR PATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS

摘要

The invention relates to the formation of blood vessels (angiogenesis); a process necessary for the growth and spread (metastasis) of tumours. The development of screening systems for the identification of compounds that inhibit said process represents an exhaustive research field which, in recent years, has been moving towards the use of computerised and robotised systems. The invention relates to an image acquisition and processing system which was designed and developed to be the nucleus of a platform intended for massive screening processes in experiments based on miniaturised in vitro angiogenesis models. Said system sequentially acquires and processes images of standard microplate cavities obtained using a microscope and digital camera. The invention also relates to a method of quantifying the degree of angiogenesis based on a morphological and topological analysis of the network of generated vessels which gives added value to the standard microvascular density parameter. Additional factors are taken into account in the calculation, such as vessel connectivity and length. The inventive system complies with the basic requirements of such experiments: objectivity, reproducibility and speed, which are achieved due to the automatic angiogenesis activity quantification capability developed.