LC3 is a marker protein in autophagy; some studies have shown that it is highly expressed in HCC tissues [17, 18]; Accordingly, we used the Pearson correlation to analyze the relationship between the expression of MCT1 mRNA and LC3B mRNA in the 85 HCC tissues, which determined that MCT1 mRNA expression correlated positively with that of LC3B mRNA (r = 0.676, p < 0.001) (Fig. 6d). Here, SLC16A1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.