SMOC2 and hepatocellular carcinoma: These findings are consistent with other cancer studies which have reported SMOC2 to be important for signaling EMT in colon cancer [26, 54], metastasis in lung adenocarcinoma [27] and colon cancer [26, 54], and proliferation in hepatocellular carcinoma [29], endometrial cancer [55] and colon cancer [26].