SERPINA1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Earlier studies have also demonstrated significantly increased levels of blood A1AT in a good number of cancers including hepatocellular carcinoma (Hong & Hong, 1991), pancreatic adenocarcinoma (Trachte et al., 2002), gastrointestinal cancers (Solakidi et al., 2004), infiltrating ductal breast carcinoma (Hamrita et al., 2010) and lung cancer (Patz et al., 2007) but the present study, performed by 2DE as well as ELISA, is the first to report on the enhanced levels of A1AT in the serum samples of PTCa patients.