VEGFC and breast cancer: We determined the VEGF-C/D expression levels by quantitative real-time PCR in our matching pairs, and in primary tumours of 10 breast cancer patients who exclusively developed distant metastases, of 10 patients who developed both lymph node and distant metastases and of 11 patients who did not develop any regional or distant metastases within a median follow-up of 8.6 years.