When comparing HCC patients in the presence or absence of liver cirrhosis to healthy controls, Gas6/alb achieved an excellent discriminatory power (AUC 0.942, 95% CI 0.917–0.968; Fig. 4D; Supplementary Table S2) superior to Gas6 (AUC 0.916, 95% CI 0.882–0.95), sAxl/alb (AUC 0.845, 95% CI 0.8–0.889), and sAxl (AUC 0.765, 95% CI 0.706–0.823; Fig. 4D, Supplementary Table S2). Here, ALB is linked to cirrhosis of liver.