In our study, the combination of AFP (cut-off of ≥ 20 ng/mL) and sAxl at a cutoff of ≥ 61 ng/mL reached excellent diagnostic accuracy with a sensitivity and specificity of 84.0% and 100% for HCC with cirrhosis (AUC 0.954), and 85.7% and 96.4% for HCC without cirrhosis (AUC 0.941), respectively. The gene discussed is AFP; the disease is hepatocellular carcinoma.