A gene expression profile of 424 LIHC (liver hepatocellular carcinoma) patients was downloaded from UCSC Xena datahub (https://gdc-hub.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/download/TCGA-LIHC.htseq_fpkm.tsv.gz). Then, normalized mRNA expression of ULK1 in liver cancer and normal liver tissues was analyzed by GraphPad Prism 7.0 (GraphPad Prism Software, La Jolla, CA). Comparison of ULK1 expression among cancer cell lines was performed using the online tool Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (https://sites.broadinstitute.org/ccle/). Tumor tissues from patients diagnosed with HCC accompanied by hepatitis B virus infection and paired adjacent non-tumor tissues were used to detect ULK1 protein expression in liver cancer.