About the Authors

Kensuke Kojima

Contributed equally to this work with: Kensuke Kojima, Craig April, Claudia Canasto-Chibuque, Jian-Bing Fan, Yujin Hoshida

Affiliation Liver Cancer Program, Tisch Cancer Institute, Division of Liver Diseases, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Craig April

Contributed equally to this work with: Kensuke Kojima, Craig April, Claudia Canasto-Chibuque, Jian-Bing Fan, Yujin Hoshida

Affiliation Illumina, Inc., San Diego, California, United States of America

Claudia Canasto-Chibuque

Contributed equally to this work with: Kensuke Kojima, Craig April, Claudia Canasto-Chibuque, Jian-Bing Fan, Yujin Hoshida

Affiliation Liver Cancer Program, Tisch Cancer Institute, Division of Liver Diseases, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Xintong Chen

Affiliation Liver Cancer Program, Tisch Cancer Institute, Division of Liver Diseases, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Manjeet Deshmukh

Affiliation Liver Cancer Program, Tisch Cancer Institute, Division of Liver Diseases, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Anu Venkatesh

Affiliation Liver Cancer Program, Tisch Cancer Institute, Division of Liver Diseases, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Poh Seng Tan

Affiliation Liver Cancer Program, Tisch Cancer Institute, Division of Liver Diseases, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Masahiro Kobayashi

Affiliation Department of Hepatology, Toranomon Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

Hiromitsu Kumada

Affiliation Department of Hepatology, Toranomon Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

Jian-Bing Fan

Contributed equally to this work with: Kensuke Kojima, Craig April, Claudia Canasto-Chibuque, Jian-Bing Fan, Yujin Hoshida

Affiliation Illumina, Inc., San Diego, California, United States of America

Yujin Hoshida

Contributed equally to this work with: Kensuke Kojima, Craig April, Claudia Canasto-Chibuque, Jian-Bing Fan, Yujin Hoshida

yujin.hoshida@mssm.edu

Affiliation Liver Cancer Program, Tisch Cancer Institute, Division of Liver Diseases, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Competing Interests

YH is a named investigator on a patent application entitled “Compositions, kits, and methods for detecting, characterizing, preventing, and treating hepatic disorders (USPTO application number: #20110263441)”. NanoString, Inc. has secured the option to an exclusive worldwide license. There is no other relevant declaration relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development or modified products, etc. CA and JBF are employed by a commercial company, Illumina, Inc. There is no other relevant declaration relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development or marketed products, etc. YH is a PLOS ONE Editorial Board member. These do not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: CA JBF YH. Performed the experiments: CA CCC MD JBF YH. Analyzed the data: KK CA XC JBF YH AV PST. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MK HK. Wrote the paper: KK CA JBF YH.