Clinical samples
Between January and October 2020, HCC tissue samples along with adjacent normal tissues, situated about 1 cm from the margin of the tumor, were gathered from 10 patients at the Ningbo Medical Center Li Huili Hospital, Zhejiang, China. Before undergoing the surgical procedure, every patient provided their signed informed consent, and the tissue collection complied with the medical ethics standards of Ningbo Medical Center Li Huili Hospital (approval no. KY2021PJ188). Importantly, before the sample collection, none of the patients received any kind of treatment with chemotherapy or radiation. Five of the samples were from patients in more advanced stages of HCC (stages III and IV), while the others were from patients in earlier stages (stages I and II). All diagnoses were made following the Revised International System for Staging Liver Cancer [23]. All patients have provided written informed consent.