CXCL8 and hepatocellular carcinoma: To further investigate whether IL-8 can regulate the expression of integrin αvβ3 in HCC cells, we transfected HCCLM3 and MHCC97H cells with IL-8 siRNA, which resulted in a significant decrease in the level of IL-8 mRNA and the level of IL-8 secreted by HCC cells, suggesting the effective knockdown of IL-8 by IL-8 siRNA (Fig. 3a, b).