Research Article Proinflammatory Cytokines Increase Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Expression in Alveolar Epithelial Cells

License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is an endothelial permeability mediator that is highly expressed in lung epithelium. In nonlung cells proinflammatory cytokines have been shown to increase VEGF expression, but their effects on lung epithelium remain unclear. We hypothesized that increases in alveolar epithelial cell VEGF RNA and protein expression occur after exposure to proinflammatory cytokines. We tested this using human alveolar epithelial cells (A549) stimulated with 5 proinflammator