NFKB1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: To test whether PAPPA might be indeed responsible for activation and auto-regulation of the NFκB pathway, we assessed NFκB activity in stimulated HCC cells and observed a striking correlation of PAPPA levels in conditioned medium (CM) from the 15 different HSCs with NFκB activity induced in HCC cells upon incubation with these different CMs (Fig 5A).