Spatial and temporal expression of vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP) in fetal and adult human cerebral cortex

Vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP) is a member of the Ena/VASP protein family and was for the first time identified in human platelets. VASP plays a role for cell adhesion and cell migration because of E/DFPPPPXD/E amino acid sequence in its structure which gives reaction with focal adhesion proteins. In this study we suggest that VASP expression may have important role for neural cell migration, differentiation, axonal growth and angiogenesis during prenatal cerebral cortical development. Our aim is to detect VASP expression by means of immunohistochemistry and Western blot analysis in developing human neocortex and adult brain cortex (n = 12 samples from first, second, and third trimesters and n = 3 adult normal cerebral cortex). Our results suggest that VASP showed different immunostaining patterns between cerebral cortical plates in prenatal and adult human brain samples. We observed that the expression patterns of the VASP protein are clearly identified in fibers, cytoplasm of neural cells and endothelial cells of vessels. We detected that VASP indicates progressive expression from the adult brain to second trimester neocortexes. Therefore, we suggest that VASP may play a crucial role in the regulation of human neonatal cerebral cortical development.