HIF1A and cancer: Zhong et al (1999) first observed HIF-1α expression in a few cases of pre-malignant breast, prostatic and colonic tissue. Subsequent studies with greater numbers of patients showed that HIF-1α expression is involved, and progressively increased expression has been observed in the pre-malignant phases and developmental steps of breast (Bos et al, 2001), skin (Costa et al, 2001) and cervical (Acs et al, 2003) cancer. In prostatic carcinoma, HIF-1α expression was highly expressed in the precursor lesion, prostatic intra-epithelial neoplasia (Zhong et al, 2004).