TERT and hepatocellular carcinoma: Recent studies using next-generation sequencing (NGS) have yielded a list of recurrently mutated genes in HCC, including TERT (telomere maintenance), TP53 (cell-cycle pathway), CTNNB1/AXIN1 (WNT/β-catenin pathway), ARID1A/ARID2 (epigenetic modifier), and NFE2L2 (oxidative stress pathway) [5,9,10].