TGFB1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: We next tried to corroborate the conclusion drawn in in vitro data by visualizing the HCC tissue expression of TGFβ and Tregs (through using FoxP3 staining), as well as retrospectively analyzing HCC tissue mRNA expression levels of TGF-β, aSMA, and FoxP3 in publicly available microarray data (Figure 3).