ITGA2 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Key TGFB activators include integrin proteins (Goodwin and Jenkins, 2009; Khan and Marshall, 2016), 4 of which (ITGA2, ITGA3, ITGB1, ITGB3) displayed increased expression in the HCC tumor cells (Log2 fold change = −6.16, −5.56, −2.32, and −4.35, respectively).