Chronic damage to hepatocytes causes persistent inflammation, leading to chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and eventually hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).1 Along with the concept that the HCC microenvironment is composed of a heterogeneous mixture of tumor cells, stromal cells, and immune cells, increasing evidence from experimental and clinical studies suggests the critical role of inflammatory tumor microenvironments in the development and progression of HCC.2 Although it is challenging to accurately assess whether HCC development occurs in a proinflammatory or anti-inflammatory fashion, the role of immune cells in the context of cancer-related inflammation is currently being studied intensively based on observations that immune cells and immune-related mediators are expressed in the tumor environments of different types of cancer,2,3 highlighting the effects of antitumor immune responses on the inflammatory milieu.