By comparing the mRNA levels of SAA in paired tumoral and peritumoral tissues from the TCGA database, we found that SAA was expressed at a considerably higher level in peritumoral tissues than in tumor tissues, demonstrated by multiplexed immunohistochemistry (mIHC) analysis in paired HCC tissue microarray (TMA) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis of both resectable HCC specimens and mouse tissues (Supplementary Fig. 6 and Supplementary Table 6). This evidence concerns the gene SAA1 and hepatocellular carcinoma.