To explore directly the ability of mouse macrophages to produce increased amounts of VEGF during active virus replication, monolayers of IC-21 mouse macrophages, a macrophage cell line of C57BL/6 origin [41], were either mock-infected (control), treated with LPS (positive control), inoculated with UV-inactivated MCMV (negative control), or inoculated with infectious MCMV at a dose resulting in a low level of infection (2.5 PFU/cell). Here, VEGFA is linked to infection.