To shed some light on this opportunity and to increase the likelihood of identifying disease-causing loci, we in the present study genotyped 8 nonsynonymous coding polymorphisms in HLA-DRB1 gene among 521 Han Chinese, and the striking finding of this study was that rs17879599 in exon 2, where glutamine (Gln99) is substituted for histidine (His99) at residue 99, might play an independent leading role in predisposition to the development of HCC. Here, HLA-DRB1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.