VEGFA and gastric cancer: The aberrant expression of STC1 has been reported to impact various types of cancer, such as triggering tumor angiogenesis by upregulating the expression of VEGF in gastric cancer cells (He et al., 2011), causing tumorigenesis and poor clinical outcomes in ovarian, colorectal, and lung cancers (Yeung et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2019).