Human HCC cell lines (PLC-8024, Huh7, Hep3B, MHCC-97H and HepG2) and MIHA normal liver cells were purchased from the Shanghai Cell Bank of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Shanghai, China) with short tandem repeat appraisal certificates. All cells were cultured as described previously.21 (link) Huh7 and MHCC-97H cells were infected with lentiviral pLKO.1 particles containing short hairpin RNA (shRNA) and were selected with 3 mg/mL puromycin (ThermoFisher, Waltham, MA, USA) for 4 days. Lentiviral pLKO.1 plasmids for shPLOD2 (Jidan, Guangzhou, China) were packaged with Lenti-Pac HIV mix (GeneCopoeia, Guangzhou, China) and Endo-Fectin Lenti (GeneCopoeia, Guangzhou, China) in 293T cells to produce lentiviral particles. For BIRC3 overexpression experiment, the BIRC3 expression plasmid (Jidan, Guangzhou, China) was packaged with Lipofectamine 2000 (ThermoFisher, Waltham, MA, USA) and then infected PLOD2 knockdown (KD) Huh7 and MHCC-97H cells.