Employing a combination of cellular, biochemical and genetic experiments, we showed that (i) human and murine pericytes express functional Tie2 receptor, (ii) Tie2 - silenced pericytes have a pro-migratory phenotype, (iii) Tie2 downstream signalling in pericytes involves Calpain, Akt and FOXO3A, (iv) Ng2 - Cre - driven deletion of pericyte - expressed Tie2
delays developmental angiogenesis and vessel maturation, and (v) Tie2 deletion in pericytes results in a pro-angiogenic
tumour vasculature with enhanced
tumour growth.