MALAT1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Long‐chain noncoding RNA MALAT1 was first identified in the primary non‐small cell lung cancer cells of patients by subtractive hybridization and is highly conserved in mammalian evolution.21 Multiple studies have confirmed that the lncRNA MALAT1 is abnormally expressed in many human malignancies and changes the biological phenotypes of tumor cells.22, 23, 24 MALAT1 has varying effects on tumor proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and metastasis, and on drug resistance.25 Our data indicate that MALAT1 levels were considerably increased in HCC tumors.