Intriguingly, in contrast to the effect of conventional chemotherapeutic agent cisplatin, to which CSCs are known to resist,28 VC treatment markedly downregulated the expressions of stemness-related genes and reduced the percentage of CD133+,25 EpCAM+,29 or OV6+26,27 CSCs both in HCC cells and tumorspheres (Fig. 4a–c, h). This evidence concerns the gene PROM1 and hepatocellular carcinoma.