It is reported that the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is more frequently expressed in well-differentiated tumours, and that it promotes angiogenesis in human gastric carcinoma (Tanigawa et al, 1997) and also that the prognosis in the group with high VEGF-C expression was significantly poorer than that in the group with lower VEGF-C expression (Takahashi et al, 2002). Here, VEGFC is linked to gastric carcinoma.