Meanwhile, compared with tumour tissues from the inoculation of SMMC-7721 cells alone, the expression of E-cadherin was significantly downregulated, but the expression of vimentin, β-catenin and c-Myc was upregulated in tumour tissues that were inoculated from the mixture of SMMC-7721 and TAMs, which was reversed by CpG ODN pre-treatment of TAMs (Fig. 7c). Here, MYC is linked to neoplasm.