A number of tumour cells in humans have been seen to express higher levels of VEGF mRNA compared to normal tissue (Brown et al, 1993; Plate et al, 1993; Abu-Jawdeh et al, 1996; Yoshiji et al, 1996), suggesting an association of VEGF with a malignant phenotype; furthermore, an elevated VEGF expression has also been correlated to a worse prognosis in cancers such as gastric (Maeda et al, 1996; Takahashi et al, 1996), colonic (Takahashi et al, 1995) and lung carcinomas (Mattern et al, 1995; Ohta et al, 1996; Fontanini et al, 1997b, 1999). Here, VEGFA is linked to cancer.