HGF and cancer: In the present study, microarray analysis and subsequent quantitative PCR revealed that JHDM1D-AS1-overexpressing AsPC-1 and PANC-1 cancer cells showed increased angiogenesis through upregulation of genes for angiogenic factors, including HGF and FGF1. We and others previously demonstrated that the nutrient-deprived tumor microenvironment and several long noncoding RNAs can promote tumor angiogenesis (11, 19, 23, –, 25), but the specific lncRNAs involved in angiogenesis under nutrient starvation are not fully understood.