Circulating small extracellular vesicle-derived splicing factor 3b subunit 4 as a non-invasive diagnostic biomarker of early hepatocellular carcinoma.

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateAll experiments performed in this study were conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Ajou University Hospital, Suwon, South Korea (AJRIB-BMR-KSP-18-397, AJIRB-BMR-KSP-18-299, AJOUIRB-EX-2022-389, and AJOUIRB-EX-2023-368). The requirement for informed consent was waived. Consent for publicationNot applicable. Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests. Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests."

"Funding This research was supported by grants from the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute, funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea (HR21C1003 and HR22C1734) and the Bio and Medical Technology Development Program of the National Research Foundation (NRF-2022R1H1A2093189, NRF-2022R1A2C2092422, NRF-2022M3A9G101451421, and NRF-2021R1C1C1009619) funded by the Korean government (Ministry of Science and ICT)."