Several recent articles including ours confirmed the presence of a VEGF-mediated autocrine signaling mechanism in tumor cells that contributes to tumorigenesis and drug resistance by imparting stem-cell like features to cancer cells.15–19 Interestingly, all these articles point towards the VEGF/NRP1 axis to be the major player behind this recently discovered angiogenesis-independent function of VEGF. This evidence concerns the gene NRP1 and cancer.