A recent study showed that both SQSTM1 and NFE2L2 protect HCC cells from ferroptosis (Sun et al., 2016b); however, no consistent change was observed in these two genes between the high- and low-CIFI subgroups, suggesting that the SQSTM1-Keap1-NFE2L2 pathway might not play a role in the CIFI-stratified subgroups. This evidence concerns the gene SQSTM1 and hepatocellular carcinoma.