Ex Vivo Retinal Explant Cultures to Study Angiogenic Responses

The mouse retina has long been regarded as an easily accessible and advantageous system to investigate important questions of developmental angiogenesis. The protocol presented here profits from the suitability of the mouse retina as experimental model and describes an ex vivo culture technique of mouse retina explants that allows the quantitative assessment of angiogenic responses to pharmacological manipulations. The technique involves the extraction of the retina from the intact eye, the immediate flat mounting of the tissue on a hydrophilic membrane and the acute stimulation or inhibition of angiogenic processes of the developing vessels in their physiological context ex vivo. The numbe…