High activation of PI3K/Akt has been reported to induce sorafenib resistance in HCC (Jeter et al., 2015; Shan et al., 2012), and this activation is sustained to promote OCT4 and Nanog expression for chemoresistance and EMT in cancer cells (Almozyan et al., 2017), suggesting that PI3K/Akt‐mediated phosphorylation stabilizes Nanog protein expression to facilitate sorafenib resistance. Here, POU5F1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.