In order to evaluate the diagnostic value of hypermethylation of the Mex3a promoter as a non-invasive biomarker, PBMCs of HCC patients were selected as study specimens, and MethyLight, a high-throughput quantitative methylation assay, was performed with higher sensitivity and specificity than MSP techniques (Yang et al., 2022). Here, MEX3A is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.