To evaluate the relationship of protein expression between Cav-1 and GLI1 in HCC tissues, we also performed IHC to detect GLI1 expression in HCC tissues and found that GLI1 was also up-regulated in HCC tissues and positive associated with Cav-1 significantly in HCC tissues (Fig. 5B, r  = 0.420, P<0.05) after analyzing the IHC scores using the Spearmen rank test, which suggests that GLI1 could lead to up-regulation of Cav-1 in HCC tissues. Here, GLI1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.