Since sorafenib was reported to protect against the metastasis of HBV-related HCC through inhibiting Raf kinase and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor and served as a systemic therapy for advanced HCC (Lin et al., 2016; Harding et al., 2018), the sorafenib group was included as the positive control in this study. Here, VEGFA is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.