Of note, several well-known pathways in development of HCC such as VEGF [25] (e.g. mitogen-activated protein kinase 13, protein kinase C, beta) and p53 [25] (e.g. cyclin-dependent kinase 6, insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3) signaling pathway related genes were changed significantly in comparison between peritumoral HSCs and CAMFs (Figure 4 and Additional file 4). Here, MAP3K13 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.