USP44 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Next, we performed immunohistochemistry (IHC) using tissue microarrays (TMAs) from 191 HCC patients who underwent curative resection and we found that the median overall survival (OS) time was significantly shorter in patients with low USP44 expression than in those with high expression (Fig. 1D), which is consistent with the data from the TCGA database.