Bioinformatics studies have demonstrated that PRNP contributes to the establishment of an HCC-related prognostic signature, which accurately predicts the prognosis of patients with HCC, thereby shedding light on the potential autophagy mechanisms in liver cell cancer (Chen et al., 2021).Kim et al. (2022) found that cellular prion protein encoded by the PRNP gene increases the risk of recurrence and decreases the survival rate of patients with liver cancer after surgery, as was predicted by the model in our study. The gene discussed is PRNP; the disease is liver cancer.