BIRC5 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Thus, SURVIVIN/BIRC5 overexpression has been associated with the onset and progression of several types of cancer [40,50,53,54,55], and, regarding HCC, the expression of SURVIVIN/BIRC5 has been reported in 41% of cases and its high expression has been associated with a poor prognosis in patients [40,56,57,58].