While shRNA and particularly CRISPR-Cas9 profoundly suppressed glutamine and leucine initial-rate transport, the results indicated that neither suppression nor knockout of ASCT2 or LAT1 is alone sufficient to inhibit the in vitro growth of epithelial or mesenchymal human HCC cells, or to suppress mTORC1 signaling. Here, SLC1A5 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.