We found significantly (P <0.01) lower cytoplasmic VEGF-A expression levels in IBC tumor epithelial cells than in normal breast tissues (Figure 1B and C), cytoplasmic VEGF-R1 expression levels were slightly higher (Figure 1E and F; P = 0.25), and cytoplasmic VEGF-R2 expression levels were significantly higher (Figure 1H and I; P = 0.04)(Figure 1, Table 1 and Additional file 1: Figure S1: VEGF-A, VEGF-R1, and VEGF-R2 protein expression in normal and IBC samples). Here, FLT1 is linked to neoplasm.