MTOR and hepatocellular carcinoma: To validate the relevance of the upregulation of TSC1/mTOR pathway via IKKβ signaling in HBV-associated human HCC, we evaluated the expression of pIKKβ, pTSC1, and pS6K1 in a tissue microarray of 95 HBV-associated human HCC tissue specimens by immunohistochemical staining.