SMO and hepatocellular carcinoma: Dysregulation of the Hh pathway, often due to mutations in PTCH, SMO or Suppressor of Fused (SUFU), or through ligand-dependent activation, has been implicated in several cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), where it is associated with increased tumor burden, invasion, metastasis and poor prognosis (Machado and Diehl 2018; Nguyen and Cho 2022).