TEK and proliferative diabetic retinopathy: As retinal neovascularization is one of the frequent causes of vision loss in patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy and neovascular age-related macular degeneration (Gariano and Gardner, 2005), these data suggests that reduction of Tie2 mediated signals in ECs and / or other Tie2 expressing cells may be implicated in the vascular pathologies.