CD8A and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis: As CD8+ T cells are generally believed to induce an anti-tumor response, this finding was surprising: it was suggested that the CD8+ T cell tumor immune surveillance was impaired through the exhaustion of these cells in NASH-HCC and that these exhausted CD8+ T cells, instead of preventing it, contributed to the progression of HCC from NASH [129,130].