VEGFA and rheumatoid arthritis: In our previous studies, dysregulated autophagy (Wang et al., 2019) and dysimmunity (Li et al., 2019) were verified to be involved in the progression of the RA synovial pannus formation; in particular, angiogenesis and the interaction between fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) and human dermal microvascular endothelial cells (HDMECs) via vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) angiogenic functional modules play a critical role in RA disease progression (Zhang et al., 2017).