MBD3 and hepatocellular carcinoma: In order to investigate the role of MBD3 in the development of HCC, we first estimated the MBD3 expression level in a normal hepatocyte cell line (L02) and five HCC cell lines (Hep3B, SK-Hep1, HepG2, MHCC97H and Huh7) (Fig. 2a).