VEGFA and gastric cancer: Zhang's team has demonstrated that apatinib combined with salidroside significantly reduced hypoxia-inducible factor 1(HIF-1α), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), matrix metallopeptidase (MMPs), and multidrug resistance 1 (MDR1) gene expression, and enhanced the chemosensitivity of gastric cancer cells by regulating the hypoxic microenvironment as well as up-regulating pro-apoptotic gene expression [47].