GJA1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: For example, a study conducted by Ogawa et al. demonstrated that suppression of Cx43 expression in rat hepatocellular carcinoma cells using Cx43-siRNA reduced invasion and migration capacity in vitro, as well as metastatic ability in-vivo, which suggests that Cx43 may be a target for drugs to prevent cancer metastasis in tumors that overexpress Cx43 [30].