SPINT1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: To investigate whether the expression level of HAI-1 would upregulate after demethylation in HCC, we firstly performed the chromatin condensation assay using Hoechst 33342 stain and observed that nuclei of 5-Aza-dC-treated, which is a DNA methyltransferase inhibitor, SMMC7721 cells showed highly stained and condensed chromatin bound to fluorescence dyes under a fluorescence microscope (Figure 3(a)).