SERPINB3 and neoplasm: Of note, SerpinB3 is physiologically expressed in the lung, the esophagus and the uterine cervix, whereas it is almost undetectable in normal hepatocytes but was found to be overexpressed in HCC [58,76] as well as in highly dysplastic nodules and in hepatocytes surrounding the tumor, suggesting that its overexpression represents an early event in liver carcinogenesis [28,58,76,77,78].