Chen et al. (2015) suggested an association between heparanase expression and cell adhesion, and metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines. Previous studies (Tatsumi et al., 2020) also reported that HPSE1 played a role in the regulation of proliferation and autophagy in normal and malignant cells, conferring survival benefits and resistance to chemotherapy. Here, HPSE is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.