MTOR and hepatocellular carcinoma: Furthermore, SOX18 also appears necessary for cell survival in hepatocellular carcinoma through regulation of the AMPK/mTOR pathway, as demonstrated by in vitro knockdown and overexpression experiments where SOX18 levels negatively correlated with AMPK phosphorylation and positively correlated with mTOR phosphorylation and cell viability (Sun et al., 2019).