HPSE and hepatocellular carcinoma: Various studies have examined the clinical significance of heparanase in HCC patientsusing immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, RT-PCR and realtime-PCR, western blotting and tissue microarrays (TMAs), with the generalconclusion being that heparanase is up-regulated in HCC (El-Assal et al., 2001; Xiao et al., 2003; Chen et al., 2004; Liu et al., 2005; Chen et al., 2008).