Hypoxia is a common tumorigenesis enhancer, mostly owing to its impact on gene
expression of many angiogenic and invasion-related mediators, some of which are natural
substrates for the proprotein convertase furin. Analysis of furin promoters revealed the
presence of putative binding sites for hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), a transcription
complex that plays a pivotal role in cellular adaptation to hypoxia. In fact, we demonstrate
herein that the levels of fur mRNA, encoding furin, are remarkably increased upon hypoxic …