UBXN1 and neoplasm: To address the potential involvement of UBXN proteins in the development and progression of HCC, we first analyzed the mRNA expression patterns of UBXN proteins in the tumor and nontumor tissues of HCC patients and found that the transcript level of UBXN1 was consistently and significantly elevated in tumor tissues compared to nontumor tissues from the TCGA-LIHC, ICGC-LIHC and GEO14520 cohorts (Fig. 1A and Supplementary 1A–C).