“…Elevated serum AMF is found in patients with malignant tumors such as colorectal, lung, kidney, breast and gastrointestinal carcinomas and is well correlated with the development of metastasis (Iiizumi et al, 2008). Moreover, overexpression of AMF in normal fibroblasts lead to a gain of tumorigenicity (Funasaka et al, 2007). During tumor progression, an additional role of AMF is revealed, namely, it is demonstrated that AMF not only stimulates AMF-producing tumor cell motility in an autocrine manner by binding to its receptor, but also acts as a paracrine factor for vein endothelial cells; when functioning as a paracrine factor, AMF induces angiogenesis by stimulating cell motility and upregulating its VEGFR expression, and it may facilitate metastasis by becoming more active at the metastasis phase (Funasaka et al, 2001).…”