Virgintino Daniela, Errede Mariella, Robertson David, Girolamo Francesco, Masciandaro Antonio, Bertossi Mirella
Dipartimento di Anatomia Umana e di Istologia, Università di Bari, Italy.
Histochem Cell Biol. 2003 Mar;119(3):227-32. doi: 10.1007/s00418-003-0510-y. Epub 2003 Mar 11.
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a potent angiogenic factor working as an endothelial cell-specific mitogen and exerting a trophic effect on neurons and glial cells, both these activities being essential during central nervous system vascularisation, development and repair. The vascularisation of human telencephalon takes place by means of an angiogenic mechanism, which starts at the beginning of corticogenesis and actively proceeds up to the last neuronal migration, when the basic scheme of the vascular network has been drawn. Our study focused on VEGF during this critical developmental period with the aim of identifying the cells that express VEGF and of correlating the events of angiogenesis with the main events of cerebral cortex formation. The results show that in fetal human brain VEGF protein is located on multiple cell types, cells proper to the nervous tissue, neuroepithelial cells, neuroblasts and radial glia cells, and non-neuronal cells, endothelial and periendothelial cells. In these cells VEGF expression appears developmentally regulated and is correlated with angiogenesis, which in turn responds to the high metabolic demands of the differentiating neocortex.
血管内皮生长因子（VEGF）是一种强效血管生成因子，作为内皮细胞特异性有丝分裂原发挥作用，并对神经元和神经胶质细胞产生营养作用，这两种活性在中枢神经系统血管形成、发育和修复过程中都至关重要。人类端脑的血管形成通过一种血管生成机制进行，该机制在皮质发生开始时启动，并在最后一次神经元迁移之前积极进行，此时血管网络的基本框架已经形成。我们的研究聚焦于这个关键发育时期的VEGF，目的是确定表达VEGF的细胞，并将血管生成事件与大脑皮层形成的主要事件相关联。结果表明，在胎儿人脑中，VEGF蛋白存在于多种细胞类型中，包括神经组织特有的细胞、神经上皮细胞、神经母细胞和放射状胶质细胞，以及非神经元细胞、内皮细胞和血管周细胞。在这些细胞中，VEGF表达呈现出发育调控，并且与血管生成相关，而血管生成又对分化中的新皮层的高代谢需求作出反应。
