CDC7 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Based on the IHC staining results, HCC patients were divided into two groups with high (n = 71) or low (n = 39) CDC7 expression, and representative images of staining were shown in Fig. 4A. The association of CDC7 expression and the clinical characteristics was presented in Table 1, and accordingly, the expression of CDC7 was highly correlated with tumor size (P = 0.011) and TNM stage (P = 0.008).