Herein, the involvement of promotion or inhibition of liver cancer stem cells growth based on IKKα, IKKβ, IKKγ is supported by results from two parallel sets of experiments: (1) IKKα plus IKKβ promoted and IKKγ inhibited liver cancer stem cell growth in vitro; (2) IKKα plus IKKβ promoted and IKKγ inhibited liver cancer stem cell growth in vivo. The gene discussed is IKBKG; the disease is liver cancer.