AFP and hepatocellular carcinoma: We utilized our original patient-derived Kami41 and KM cells as the AFP-negative HCC cells because the available AFP-negative HCC cell lines such as HLE, HLF, and SK-Hep-1 cells have gene expression signatures that are characteristic of mesenchymal cells without hepatocyte-like gene expression patterns [16], and therefore did not match the AFP-negative HCC with good prognosis observed clinically.