VEGFA and pulmonary emphysema: Smoke exposed mice had lower amount of Vegfa expression as well (Fig. 5, p-value of the t-test = 4.0×10−7 and 0.01 for the C57BL/6J and A/J smoking models, respectively), which suggests that Epas1 downstream target genes were down regulated in the smoke exposed mice at the time when emphysema develops in these models.