C5 and hepatocellular carcinoma: In conformity with previous reports (Scanlan et al, 2002b; Wang et al, 2002) that a subset of antigens with cancer-related serological profile was encoded by the genes of altered expression, in this study, 14 of the antigens associated with an HCC-related serological response showed altered levels of mRNA expression, including five antigens, HIMAP4 , B factor, C5, AAT and H factor, which had a lower level of mRNA expression in HCC relative to the adjacent noncancerous tissues.