SOX2 and hepatocellular carcinoma: The knockdown of integrin β1, identified as a leading integrin subtype to deliver stiffness signal into HCC cells [14, 17], attenuated higher stiffness-mediated stemness characteristics of HCC cells, and suppressed the phosphorylation levels of Akt and mTOR, as well as the expression levels of p-4E-BP and SOX2, suggesting that integrin β1 transmits higher stiffness signal into HCC cells, and drives the activation of mTOR pathway to direct stemness characteristic changes.