“…Because most patients are diagnosed at advanced stages, only about 30% of patients presenting with early-stage tumors undergo potentially curative therapies, such as surgical resection [3,4], transplantation [5,6] or percutaneous ablation [7,8,9]. In contrast, patients with unresectable HCC usually receive palliative treatments, such as transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) [10], radiotherapy [11,12] or conventional chemotherapy [13], and some patients participate in clinical trials [10,14,15,16,17]. Among these options, only TACE has been shown to lead to survival benefits [18,19].…”