EPO and hepatocellular carcinoma: Interestingly, the expression levels of HIF1A and its downstream angiogenic target genes VEGFA, VEGFC, TGFB2, TGFBR2, TGFBR3, TGFBI, TGFBRAP1, and EPO, which are known to be HCC angiogenesis-related [25, 26], were significantly down-regulated in response to Bclaf1 knockdown (Fig. 1e).