Previous studies have shown that MEX3A and HAVCR1 were associated with hypoxia and immunity and may serve as potential prognostic markers for HCC (Ding et al., 2022; Hu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2022) More importantly, the expression of HAVCR1, a gene related to fatty acid metabolism, can promote the proliferation, motility, and invasion of HCC cells (Zhu et al., 2022), which is consistent with the findings of our study. Here, MEX3A is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.