Blood vessel micro-angioarchitecture plays a pivotal role in
tumor progression, metastatic dissemination and response to
therapy. Thus, methods able to quantify microvascular trees and their anomalies may allow a better comprehension of the neovascularization process and evaluation of vascular-targeted
therapies in
cancer. To this aim, the development of a restricted set of indexes able to describe the arrangement of a microvascular tree is eagerly required. We addressed this goal through 3D analysis of the functional microvascular network in sulfo-
biotin-stained human
multiple myeloma KMS-11 xenografts in NOD/SCID mice. Using image analysis, we show that amounts, spatial dispersion and spatial relationships of adjacent classes of caliber-filtered microvessels provide a near-linear graphical "fingerprint" of
tumor micro-angioarchitecture. Position, slope and axial projections of this graphical outcome reflect biological features and summarize the properties of
tumor micro-angioarchitecture. Notably, treatment of KMS-11 xenografts with
anti-angiogenic drugs affected position and slope of the specific curves without degrading their near-linear properties. The possibility offered by this procedure to describe and quantify the 3D features of the
tumor micro-angioarchitecture paves the way to the analysis of the microvascular tree in human
tumor specimens at different stages of
tumor progression and after pharmacologic interventions, with possible diagnostic and prognostic implications.