INS and type 2 diabetes mellitus: The stimulatory effect of insulin on sprouting of EC has been reported previously,17,38–41 and these observations may explain why patients with type 2 diabetes and those that are treated with daily insulin supplementation have an increased risk of developing malignant neoplasms.18 Our observation of the correlation between INSR expression and cancer patient survival, as shown in Fig. 1d, further underscores this.