Interestingly, it is highly expressed in both murine and human fetal liver, and declines gradually during development and becomes silenced in adulthood16,28; SALL4 is also recognized as an oncofetal gene that was first described in leukemia, and then in various types of cancers including HCC16,29,30 and is proposed to have diagnostic value in several tumors31–33. The gene discussed is SALL4; the disease is cancer.