Despite recent advances in diagnostics and therapeutics, the outcome for HCC patients remains poor and distant metastasis represents a major barrier to successful treatment in most patients.1,2,28,29 Mechanistically, we revealed that Galectin-3 modulated angiogenesis- and EMT-driven tumour metastasis via activation of the PI3K-Akt-GSK-3β-β-catenin signalling cascade by targeting IGFBP3 and vimentin in the HCC tumour microenvironment (Supplementary Fig. 17). Here, AKT1 is linked to neoplasm.