Given this significant correlation between levels of TIPRL, LC3 and CD133 in HCC tissues, we investigated and observed significant reductions in TIPRL, LC3, ATG7, CD133 and CD46 mRNA levels in HCC/liver cancer cell-lines transfected with two different small interfering RNA against TIPRL (siTIPRL) (Fig. 3f,h and Supplementary Fig. 2a,c). This evidence concerns the gene ATG7 and liver cancer.