LGALS9 and hepatocellular carcinoma: In our study, we examined Gal-9 expression in 140 HBV-associated HCC patients and found that Gal-9 was specifically expressed in certain patients, and Gal-9 expression was closely correlated with some clinicopathological features, that is, lymph node metastasis (P =0.029) and Ki-67 proliferation index (P =0.009).