In addition, after stimulation with conditioned medium collected from stable Elafin overexpressing HCC cells or commercial recombinant Elafin, HCC cells exhibited increased migration and invasion abilities (Fig. 3d and e), while after stimulation with the conditioned medium collected from the Elafin knockdown groups, the HCC cells exhibited lower migration and invasion abilities compared with the negative control conditioned medium (Fig. 3f). Here, PI3 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.