TNF and hepatocellular carcinoma: To confirm this hypothesis, the expression of SALL4 was detected upon inflammation induction in HCC cells; combined with the results in Figure 5A, it could clearly show that inflammation induced by HBV or TNF-α significantly down-regulated miR-497 expression (Figure 5A) and upregulated the expression of SALL4, at both the mRNA and protein levels (Figures 6A and 6C).