VEGFA and neurodegenerative disease: Hecking et al. (2022) provided experimental evidence of VEGF’s direct neuroprotective effects in the ENS. VEGF plays a significant and potent neuroprotective role following various types of central nervous system damage, such as epilepsy (Nicoletti et al., 2008), cerebral ischemia (Guo et al., 2016), oxidative stress (Cabezas et al., 2019), and neurodegenerative diseases (Guo et al., 2019; Lange et al., 2016). Calvo et al. (2022) found that a lack of retrograde transport of VEGF from the periphery affects the physiology of intact motoneurons, leading to a state akin to axotomy.