Controlling Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor: Therapies for Ocular Diseases Associated with Nevascularization

  • Robert J. Marano
  • P. Elizabeth Rakoczy
Conference paper
Part of the Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology book series (volume 572)

Abstract

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a potent stimulator of angiogenesis and is essential for normal embryonic development and many physiological events that require the growth of new blood vessels. Abnormal expression of endogenous VEGF can lead to ocular diseases including age related macular degeneration (Ohno-Matsui et al., 2001) and diabetic retinopathy (Aiello et al., 1994; Boulton et al., 1998), which are the two leading causes of blindness in the developed world. Regulation of VEGF expression occurs primarily through trans-factor interactions with cis-elements located on the 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions (UTR’s) and include stabilizing and destabilizing elements in addition to enhancer regions (Coles et al., 2004; Dibbens et al., 1999; Iida et al., 2002; Levy et al., 1997; Marano et al., 2004). The prime stimuli of VEGF upregulation are hypoxic or ischemic conditions, which indirectly activates VEGF through interactions between hypoxia inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) and the hypoxia response element (HRE) located within the promoter region of the VEGF gene (Forsythe et al., 1996).

Keywords

Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Diabetic Retinopathy Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Expression Choroidal Neovascularization Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor mRNA 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Authors and Affiliations

  • Robert J. Marano
    • 1
    • 2
  • P. Elizabeth Rakoczy
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of Molecular OphthalmologyLions Eye instituteNedlandsAustralia
  2. 2.Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual SciencesUniversity of Western AustraliaAustralia

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