VIM and hepatocellular carcinoma: Bao et al. [28] found that the expression level of E-cadherin protein was significantly reduced in hepatocellular carcinoma tissues, and vimentin was overexpressed in a variety of malignant tumors of epithelial origin such as breast, gastric, and prostate cancers, involved in the complex process of tumor metastasis and played a role in the migration, adhesion, and epithelial mesenchymal transition of tumor cells and endothelial cells and tumor cell apoptosis [29, 30].