Astroglia (Oosthuyse et al., 2001) and microglia (Bartholdi et al., 1997) are sources of VEGF in the spinal cord and a role for non-neuronal cells has been described in the onset and progression of the pathology in ALS (Clement et al., 2003; Barbeito et al., 2004; Sargsyan et al., 2005). The gene discussed is VEGFA; the disease is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.