For these unfavorable hub survival genes, previous studies found that overexpression of CXCL8 in HCC cell resulted in increased cell proliferation and migration (Yang et al., 2020); the impaired expression of GABRA3 (Liu et al., 2008) and SPP1 (Wang et al., 2019) decreased HCC cell viability; ITGBL1 increased KRT17 overexpression and promoted the metastatic ability of HCC cells (Huang et al., 2020); nicotine stimulated CYP1A1 expression to promote HCC cell proliferation (Ung et al., 2021); carvacrol inhibited the viability of HCC cells by downregulating SLC6A3 (Yin et al., 2022). This evidence concerns the gene KRT17 and hepatocellular carcinoma.