MALAT1 and cancer: Having demonstrated that MALAT1 expression is associated with the progression and recurrence of HCC earlier, against the background of increasing evidence linking cancer progression and recurrence to the presence of CSCs [15,16], we investigated if and how MALAT1 expression modulates the stem cell-like phenotype of HCC cells using the wild type SK-Hep1 culture cells and MALAT1 knockdown clones shMALAT1#1 and shMALAT1#2.