AFP and hepatocellular carcinoma: Recent research reported hepatitis B virus X protein up-regulated Alpha-fetoprotein to promote HCC by targeting miR-1236 and miR-1270 [25], so we first established HBx stably expressing Huh7 and HepG2 cell lines (Fig. 6d), and high HBx overexpression efficiency in Huh7 and HepG2 cells were demonstrated in Additional file 3: Figure S2B-C.