In these tumours, CXCL12 can have pleiotropic roles in autocrine growth stimulation as a tumour cell chemoattractant (Muller et al, 2001; Begley et al, 2005; Akashi et al, 2006; Engl et al, 2006; Sun et al, 2007) and as an endothelial stem cell attractant contributing to tumour vascularisation (Orimo et al, 2005), and can suppress tumour immunity (Zhou et al, 2001; Meiron et al, 2008). This evidence concerns the gene CXCL12 and neoplasm.