Therefore, the vascular permeability of healthy tissue may increase at sites distant from the tumor (possibly due to a feed-forward effect of VEGF-induced vascular permeability), leading in turn to a total increase of VEGF concentration in the plasma or the additive effects of increased VEGF secretion, vascular permeability in tumor, and tumor mass may explain the several-fold increase in plasma VEGF in cancer patients as reported in the literature [11]. The gene discussed is VEGFA; the disease is cancer.