HGF and cancer: Oncogenic deregulation of the HGF/c-MET pathway has been reported in a wide range of human cancers, including breast [36], ovarian [37], CRC [25], prostate [38], pancreatic [39], gastric [40, 41] and non-small cell lung carcinoma [42], where it is often associated with drug resistance, enhanced migration/invasion, metastasis and a poor clinical outcome [41, 43, 44].