Vascular endothelial growth factor: an essential neurotrophic factor for motoneurons?

• Published in: Neural regeneration research 2018-07, Vol.13 (7), p.1181-1182
• Main Authors: Calvo, Paula, Pastor, Angel, de la Cruz, Rosa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Apoptosis; Brain-derived neurotrophic factor; Disease; Eye movements; Motor neurons; Neurophysiology; Paralysis; Permeability; Physiology; Spinal cord; Transgenic animals; Vascular endothelial growth factor
• ISSN: 1673-5374; 1876-7958
• DOI: 10.4103/1673-5374.235024

Nowadays, it is emerging that, in addition to its vascular actions, VEGF also has a significant impact on neurons by protecting them from trauma or disease. [...]the administration of VEGF, both in vitro and in vivo through different delivery procedures, prevents or delays the death of neurons exposed to different types of insult (Lange et al., 2016). Since the knockout mice for VEGF is not viable, leading to embryonic lethality due to insufficient development of the vascular system, cardiovascular researchers designed a mutant mice with low levels of VEGF by deleting the hypoxia response element in the promoter region of the VEGF gene. Similar results were obtained when VEGF was injected intrathecally using an adeno-associated virus vector (Wang et al., 2016). [...]VEGF delivery with retrogradely transported lentivector to SOD1G93A mice also delayed the onset of the disease, slowed the progression of motoneuronal degeneration and increased life expectancy (Azzouz et al., 2004). [...]a dose-dependent study in ischemic rat brain has shown that low (2 µg/7 days) and intermediate (8 µg/7 days) doses of VEGF are not followed by angiogenesis, whereas a high dose (60 µg/7 days) does induce a powerful angiogenic response (Manoonkitiwongsa et al., 2004).