Backgrounds Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most frequent primary liver cancer and the third leading cause of cancer death. Krüppel-like factor 8 (KLF8) is an oncogene and has been shown playing an important role in HCC, but the major involved signaling pathways are still unknown. Here, we systematically analyzed the role of KLF8 in HCC using RNA sequencing and the anti-H3K27 acetylation ChIP sequencing combined with bioinformatics analysis, and the results of data mining. Results The

more »

... lts in this study showed that KLF8 worked as a transcription repressor in HCC and the main directly regulated ones were apoptosis-related genes. Furthermore, we verified the combination of KLF8 with some predicted target genes by ChIP, which supported the effectiveness of our analysis. Besides, we demonstrated that HMGA2 and MMP7, two predicted targets, were important participants in KLF8 mediated anti-apoptotic effect in HCC. Conclusions Our work offers a panoramic view of KLF8's role in HCC for the first time and facilitates the discovery of new targets for HCC via KLF8.