TGFB1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: TICs of HCC are observed to have several elevated oncogenic and anti-apoptotic signaling pathways such as PI3K/AKT (Ma et al., 2008), signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) (Wurmbach et al., 2007; Yeoh et al., 2007), Notch (Dando et al., 2005), hedgehog (Sicklick et al., 2006a; Sicklick et al., 2006b) and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) (Kitisin et al., 2007; Nguyen et al., 2007).