CXCL12 and cancer: However, inflammatory cells and molecules can also drive effective anti-cancer immunity capable of eradicating cancer or delaying its development.59 In our Random Forest analysis, VEGF and PDGFA were of the highest importance among the 44 selected genes in discriminating cancer from non-malignant ovary tissue and elevated CXCL-12, CRP and PDGFA, were significantly associated with worse prognosis in our study of intratumoral expression.