Retinal neurons titrate VEGF to limit neuronal vascularization

Drosophila melanogaster visual system halfway through pupal development,
showing retina (gold), photoreceptor axons (blue)

During development, neurons guide and attract blood vessels, and consequently, a parallelism and functional crosstalk is established.

A new study published in Cell, reports a particular neurovascular interaction in eye development and disease: VEGFR2, a critical endothelial receptor for VEGF, was more abundantly expressed in retinal neurons than in endothelial cells, including endothelial tip cells. Genetic deletion of VEGFR2 in neurons caused misdirected angiogenesis toward neurons, resulting in abnormally increased vascular density around neurons.

Further genetic experiments revealed that this misdirected angiogenesis was attributable to an excessive amount of VEGF protein around neurons caused by insufficient engulfment of VEGF by VEGFR2-deficient neurons. Moreover, absence of neuronal VEGFR2 caused misdirected regenerative angiogenesis in ischemic retinopathy. #ReadNow the original article:http://bit.ly/1APyR43