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. 2015 Apr 18;3:8. doi: 10.1186/s40364-015-0034-3

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© Mao et al. 2015

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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Mechanisms of tumor vascularization. The different mechanisms of tumor vascularization are depicted in the figure. These include: (A) sprouting angiogenesis: sprouting of pre-existing brain capillaries through proliferation and migration of local ECs; (B) vasculogenic mimicry: tumor cell-constituted, matrix-embedded fluid-conducting meshwork; (C) vascular co-option: tumor cells grow along pre-existing blood vessels; (D) vascular intussusception: internal division of the preexisting capillary plexus; (E) bone marrow-derived vasculogenesis: recruitment of circulating endothelial precursors (EPCs) to form new vessels; (F) cancer stem-like cell-derived vasculogenesis: transdifferentiation of CSCs into ECs to form new vessels.