Wen Wei Po (Reporter Chen Qing, Correspondent Yu Fei) In the list of malignant tumor incidence, kidney cancer, a former “junior”, has rapidly risen in popularity in recent years. Since kidney is a pair of “silent organs”, the early symptoms of kidney cancer are very insidious and lack of specific performance. A team of urology experts led by Professor Zheng Junhua of Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital has finally discovered the “secret way” of kidney cancer after a painstaking research, which is expected to create a “new world” for kidney cancer treatment. In the journey of conquering malignant tumors, medical scientists have constantly made new discoveries, and a series of tumor marker tests have started to play an important role in clinical practice. However, except for a very few indicators such as AFP and PSA, the specificity of other tests is not satisfactory, and it is difficult to detect the signal of kidney cancer at an early stage by routine tests in medical checkup packages. The brand new discovery of Zheng Junhua’s research team is that – kidney cancer is inextricably linked to neovascularization. Professor Zheng Junhua explained that the growth of tumor tissue is basically in a state of uncontrolled “crazy growth”, seizing the nutrients of normal tissues and “camping” around like maggots. It will also put the body in a state of hypercoagulation and even induce diffuse intravascular coagulation. The reason why tumor cells are so destructive is that their rich source of nutrition is one of the important reasons. If a piece of tissue is compared to an army, the blood vessels that supply it with blood are the channels that carry the food and supplies. While the growth of blood vessels in normal tissues is step-by-step, the growth of blood vessels in tumor tissues is “aggressive” and its speed is very impressive. “It is a natural inference from this that kidney cancer can be monitored by quantitative evaluation of the body’s vascular regeneration ability.” Professor Junhua Zheng led a team of researchers to investigate a large sample size of healthy people, patients with benign tumors and kidney cancer patients, and found that a special type of cell in human peripheral blood called “circulating endothelial progenitor cells” is highly correlated with the ability of blood vessel neovascularization. Endothelial progenitor cells are similar to less differentiated stem cells that are released from the bone marrow into the peripheral blood and rapidly proliferate when stimulated by physiological or pathological factors to evolve into vascular endothelial cells. It plays a crucial role in angiogenesis. The number of circulating endothelial progenitor cells is significantly higher in patients with kidney cancer than in benign tumors as well as in healthy subjects. The number of circulating endothelial progenitor cells in patients with kidney cancer also correlates with the stage of the tumor. The more malignant the kidney cancer and the more advanced the disease stage, the higher the level of circulating endothelial progenitor cells in patients. Further analysis also revealed that the number of circulating endothelial progenitor cells in patients could be reduced to the level of healthy individuals after undergoing kidney cancer surgery.