VEGFA and neoplasm: Hypoxia stimulates the expression of angiogenic factors such as VEGF and FGF, which induces tumor progression, recurrence, and metastasis (Sergio et al., 2008; Shim et al., 2008; Chen et al., 2022), and subsequently, HCC patients show insensitivity or resistance to TACE leading to poor prognosis (Kudo et al., 2014; Zhong et al., 2021).