IRS1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Downregulated (Thurnherr et al., 2016) Downregulated (Thurnherr et al., 2016) miR-145 regulates growth rate and proliferation and the re-expression of miR-145 resulting in cell apoptosis. It has been reported that insulin-like growth factor (IGF) is an important oncogenic pathway in HCC. Meanwhile, miR-145 targets insulin receptor substrate (IRS1)-1, IRS2, and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (Law et al., 2012)