SOX9 and hepatocellular carcinoma: The results showed that higher expression of HJURP (p < 0.01), PRKD3 (p < 0.05), SOX9 (p < 0.01), AGR2 (p < 0.01), CMTM3 (p < 0.01)), ENO2(p < 0.05) and DKK1(p < 0.01) could bring lower rate of survival, whereas up-regulation of BHMT (p < 0.01) represented better life expectancy (Figure 5), indicating that the dysregulated proteins existing in IR hepatoma cells not only participated in malignant phenotype of HCC, but also closely related to survival in patient with liver cancer.