Medical News Today (Internet) 03/05/06 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=38863 A discovery by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and their colleagues at China's Sun Yat-Sen and Shandong Universities could lead to new methods of diagnosing and treating the most common form of liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HCC, one of the hardest kinds of cancer to diagnose and treat, kills 14,000 people every year in the United States alone, primarily striking those chronically infected by the hepatitis C virus. Its occurrence is increasing faster than that of any other kind of cancer.