Year: 2011
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Studies on vascular endothelial growth factor B (VEGF-B) during the past decade or so have shown that VEGF-B appears to be a mysterious molecule with obscure, if not controversial, functions.When VEGF-B was initially discovered (Grimmond et al., 1996; Olofsson et al., 1996a), it was naturally believed to be an angiogenic factor, due to its high sequence homology and similar receptor binding pattern to VEGF, the prototypic angiogenic molecule.Much of our research effort was focused on this speculated angiogenic activity of VEGF-B for a long time.However, studies into this aspect, most of the time, turned out to be disappointing because of the negative findings.Unlike VEGF-A, VEGF-B did not seem to play a significant role in inducing blood vessel growth or vascular permeability, etc (Li et al., 2009).In addition, VEGF-B deficiency in mice did not seem to matter greatly, since VEGF-Bnull mice appeared largely healthy (Aase et al.,
Source: InTech eBooks
DOI: 10.5772/28916
Institutions: National Institutes of Health, National Eye Institute
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W1560345403