Intracellular hypoxia induced at the onset of obesity efficiently upregulates the hypoxic master transcriptional regulator, HIF-1α (hypoxia-inducible factor–1α), as well as the potent angiogenic factor VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) (Lee et al., 2014; Seo et al., 2019). The gene discussed is VEGFA; the disease is obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency.