We adopted the UALCAN online tool underlying Pearson’s correlation coefficient to acquire the co-expressed genes of five survival-related STING pathway markers, namely NRLC3, STING1, TBK1, TRIM21, and XRCC6, in the HCC cohort from TCGA database, among which the top 20 co-expressed genes for each survival-related STING pathway marker were summarized (Additional file 9: Figure S6A-E). This evidence concerns the gene TBK1 and hepatocellular carcinoma.