Department of Human Anatomy and Histology, University of Bari Medical School, Bari, Italy. ribatti@anatomia.uniba.it
Basic fibroblast growth factor/fibroblast growth factor-2 is one of the best characterized of the pro-angiogenic cytokines. This review describes its history, as well as its role in tumor angiogenesis associated with haematological malignancies, as traced by the main contributions to the international medical literature.