PTEN and hepatocellular carcinoma: In line with this possibility, prediction and functional analysis of the RNA targeted by piRNAs aberrantly expressed in HCC revealed a nonrandom, significant correlation with several major oncogenic pathways that are deregulated in HCC, including death receptor, Hippo, PI3K/AKT, Wnt/β-catenin, the p53 and PTEN pathways [3, 5, 6].