Eppenberger et al. BMC Cancer 2010, 10:93 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/10/93 Page 4 of 10 Figure 1 Figure 1A-N. Different colorectal cancer samples with negative and positive staining for VEGF ligands (cytoplasmic) and receptors (membraneous and/or cytoplasmic): VEGFA+ (A), VEGFA- (B), VEGFB+ (C), VEGFB- (D), VEGFC+ (E), VEGFC- (F), VEGFD+ (G), VEGFD- (H), VEGFR1+ (I), VEGFR1- (J), VEGFR2+ (K), VEGFR2- (L), VEGFR3+ (M) and VEGFR3- (N). Figure 2 Study Design. 489 unselected patients were initially entered into this study. After tissue microarray construction, immunohistochemistry for VEGF ligands and receptors, 102 mismatch repair-deficient cases were excluded. Analysis of VEGF ligand/receptor ratio with clinico-pathological features and survival was performed on the remaining 387 mismatch repair-proficient cases.