Ma et al. (2020) found that the expression of Aurora kinase A and ninein-interacting protein (AUNIP) was positively correlated with the degree of infiltration of dendritic cells, macrophages, neutrophils, CD8 + T cells, CD4 + T cells and B cells in HCC. Subsequent study showed that TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1) was a potential target for HCC by enhancing tumor immune infiltration (Jiang et al., 2021). Here, TBK1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.