EGFR and neoplasm: As the EGF-R promoter sequence has an Egr-1 binding consensus sequence whereas there is no reported HIF-1 responsive element upstream of the EGF-R gene coding region (Nishi et al., 2002), and studies reported that Egr-1 can bind DNA and activate EGF-R transcription in tumour cells (Nishi et al., 2002) we tested the hypothesis that Egr-1 was necessary for induced EGF-R expression within SVZ NPs in response to H–H stress.