NLRP3 and hepatocellular carcinoma: The experiments using HCC cells transfected with the plasmids encoding NLRP3 inflammasome demonstrated that the levels of NLRP3 inflammasome, caspase-1 and IL-1β were significantly increased, the proliferation of these HCC cells was inhibited, and the LDH release was upregulated, indicating that overexpression of NLRP3 suppressed the growth of HCC cells and promoted the death of HCC cells.