Vascular permeability—the essentials

Abstract

The vasculature, composed of vessels of different morphology and function, distributes blood to all tissues and maintains physiological tissue homeostasis. In pathologies, the vasculature is often affected by, and engaged in, the disease process. This may result in excessive formation of new, unstable, and hyperpermeable vessels with poor blood flow, which further promotes hypoxia and disease propagation. Chronic vessel permeability may also facilitate metastatic spread of cancer. Thus, there is a strong incentive to learn more about an important aspect of vessel biology in health and disease: the regulation of vessel permeability. The current review aims to summarize current insights into different mechanisms of vascular permeability, its regulatory factors, and the consequences for disease.

Key words:

• Edema
• histamine
• junctions
• pore
• vascular permeability
• VEGF

Acknowledgements

I thank my co-workers for their dedicated work, in particular Dr Xiujuan Li and Dr Naoki Honkura for preparation of the confocal image for Figure 2 and Dr Narendra Padhan for assistance in drawing the figures.

Funding: Work in the author’s laboratory was supported by grants from the Swedish Cancer Society (CAN2013/661), the Swedish Research Council (2010-2521), Worldwide Cancer Research (13-1295), and the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest.