While RASSF1A has been demonstrated to be hypermethylated in several series of clinical HCC specimens, other potential candidates such as p16 (CDKN2a), retinoic acid receptor (RAR) or H-cadherin (CDH13) are reported to be low or unmethylated and were therefore not considered to be suitable target genes for our study[30,37,38]. This evidence concerns the gene RASSF1 and hepatocellular carcinoma.