We further examined the clinical relevance of these two subtypes of TAMs in two additional HCC cohorts and found that higher abundance of MMP9+ TAMs in tumors is strongly associated with worse overall survival (Fig. 3b and Supplementary Fig. 6e), as compared to a weak association of VEGFA+ TAMs (Supplementary Fig. 6f). Here, MMP9 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.