MAPKAPK5 and hepatocellular carcinoma: GEO and TCGA public databases were analyzed to identify lncRNAs which potentially exert vital biological function in HCC progression, and lncRNA MAPKAPK5-AS1 which was consistently elevated in HCC in three public databases, TCGA database (p < 0.0001, Fig. 1a), GSE45436 (p < 0.0001, Fig. 1b), and GSE54236 (p < 0.0001, Additional File 3: Fig. S1A), interested us.