VEGFA and cancer: Antiangiogenic therapies are a case in point [1]: it has long been known that oxygen concentration decreases with distance from a capillary [2, 3]; this led to the hypothesis that tumors cannot grow without inducing the formation of new blood vessels [4–6] and that disrupting neoangiogenesis could be an anti-cancer therapy [7]; the search for the ‘tumor angiogenesis factor’ lead to the identification of VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) as the primary responsible for neoangiogenesis [8, 9] and the eventual development of a monoclonal antibody targeting VEGF.