VEGFA and Alzheimer disease: Angiogenic factors, particularly vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which is induced during hypoxia by transcriptional factor hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1; Leung et al., 1989), are now known to exhibit neuroprotective effects against the excitotoxicity implicated in the neurodegeneration present in AD (Greenberg and Jin, 2005).