Nonvascular role for VEGF: VEGFR-1, 2 activity is critical for neural retinal development

VEGF is critical for angiogenesis and is commonly described as endothelial cell specific; however, there is accumulating evidence that VEGF receptors are found outside the vasculature in mouse neural retina, in Schwann cells of peripheral neurons, and other tissues. We sought to define the function of VEGFR-1 and 2 in the murine neural retina during an avascular phase of development in order to correlate neural and vascular activities.