VEGFA and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: In vitro as well as in vivo studies showed that VEGF promotes neuronal survival (Silverman et al., 1999; Jin et al., 2000a,b) and prolongs the life span of ALS animal models (Lambrechts et al., 2003; Storkebaum and Carmeliet, 2004; Storkebaum et al., 2004).