IL18 and hepatocellular carcinoma: The visualized heatmaps (Supplementary Figure S1A) indicate clear expression differences in most pyroptosis-related genes between HCC tumor and normal tissues, except for that of NLRP2, GSDMA, CASP5, CASP1, IL18, NLRC4, and TNF. Pyroptosis-related genes, such as PJVK, CASP8, SCAF11, and GPX4, were significantly upregulated in HCC tumor tissues, whereas NLRP3 and IL1B were upregulated in normal tissues, suggesting that pyroptosis-related genes are crucial in HCC.