,32 In hepatic tumorigenesis, aberrant DNA methylation has been observed in the development of HCC, but most methylation studies have focused on a single gene locus,33 a target candidate gene panel,9,34,35 or even all-cause HCC,9, 10, 11, 12, 13 but these have not proven to be sufficiently robust when compared to AFP or other clinical diagnostic biomarkers. Here, AFP is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.