Vascular permeability factor/vascular endothelial growth factor stimulates endothelial proliferation, angiogenesis, and increased vascular permeability in vivo. We investigated mechanisms of vascular permeability factor-mediated endothelial monolayer permeability changes in vitro. [14C]Albumin flux across endothelial monolayers was measured following a 90-min exposure to vascular permeability factor (660 pM). Vascular permeability factor increased albumin flux to 3.4 times that of control albumin flux. Endothelial monolayers were also incubated for 90 min with vascular permeability factor plus Gö6976 (10 nM), staurosporine (1 microM), wortmannin (10 nM), AG126 (1 and 2.67 microM), and PD98059 (20 microM). Vascular permeability factor-mediated permeability was not blocked by Gö6976, an antagonist of "classical" protein kinase C, staurosporine, a pan-protein kinase C antagonist, nor wortmannin, a PI3-kinase blocker, but was blocked by incubation with AG126 or PD98059, inhibitors of mitogen-activated protein kinase activation. Immunofluorescent staining of the junctional proteins VE-cadherin and occludin showed a loss of these proteins from the endothelial junction that was prevented by co-incubation with AG126 or PD98059. These data demonstrate that vascular permeability factor increases albumin permeability across endothelial monolayers in vitro and suggests that permeability increases through rearrangement of endothelial junctional proteins involving the mitogen-activated protein kinase signal transduction pathway.