Malta et al. (2018) reported the well-calculated stemness scores for TCGA HCC patients. Therefore, we also analyzed the correlation between stemness scores and the 10 hub genes in our work. In line with aforementioned results, three of 10 hub genes, ATIC, BIRC5, and CDKN2A, also had a significant and positive correlation with stemness scores of HCC patients (Figure 5G) while others had a positive correlation but not significant (data not shown). This evidence concerns the gene CDKN2A and hepatocellular carcinoma.