AFP and neoplasm: Correlation regression analysis indicated that intratumoral Axl expression was significantly associated with some critical pathological characteristics of tumor invasiveness including multiple tumor numbers (P<0.001), absence of tumor capsule (P = 0.003), microvascular invasion (MVI, P = 0.004), preoperative positivity of serum AFP (P = 0.003), advanced BCLC stage (P<0.001) and TNM stage (P <0.001) (Table 1).