To investigate the regulatory mechanism of MCM3 in HCC progression, we used GSEA to explore the relationship between MCM3 expression and NF-κB regulated gene signatures from the TCGA dataset, and found MCM3 was positively associated with NF-κB pathway (Fig. 6a), Luciferase assay showed the activity of the NF-κB luciferase reporter gene was significantly increased in cells overexpressing MCM3, the luciferase activity was significantly reduced in cells knocking down MCM3, suggesting MCM3 activated NF-κB pathway (Fig. 6b). Here, NFKB1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.