HGF and hepatocellular carcinoma: Studies have demonstrated the role of HGF/c-Met axis in cell survival, cancer proliferation, and metastasis in HCC cases (Bahrami et al., 2017; García-Vilas and Medina, 2018; Ogunwobi et al., 2019) making anti-HGF/c-Met a promising therapeutic target for HCC treatment.