In this study, we provided evidence for the hypothesis that p62/IMP2 is aberrantly overexpressed in both HCC tissues and cell lines, and our IHC results showed that the expression of p62/IMP2 reached a high level in the early stage of cancer, which is consistent with a previous study showing that autoantibodies can be detected early in HCC [29]. Here, IGF2BP2 is linked to cancer.