AFP and hepatocellular carcinoma: We obtained the following findings on SPINK1. Firstly, in the transcriptomic training dataset, which included 279 stage I and II tumor samples (out of 1,884 stage I–IV HCC specimens) and 259 normal samples, significantly higher area under curve (AUC) values and increased integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) and net reclassification improvement (NRI) were demonstrated for HCC discrimination in SPINK1-associated models compared with those of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP).