We then focused on whether the telomere length had prognostic value and clinical relevance. We first defined samples with lower telomere signals in tumor cells than in paired peritumor liver cells as the shorter group, and higher telomere signals as the longer group (supplementary material, Figure S3E). Likewise, patients were grouped into shorter and longer according to the telomere signals of CAFs and NTFs (supplementary material, Figure S3F). Kaplan–Meier analysis demonstrated that the median OS time was 44.1 and 59.8 months for patients with shorter and longer telomeres in tumor cells, respectively (p < 0.0001, Figure 4A). The median TTR was 41.7 and 53.8 months for patients with shorter and longer telomeres in tumor cells, respectively (p = 0.004, Figure 4B). Similarly, patients with shorter telomeres in CAFs had a poorer prognosis for both OS (44.7 versus 58.3 months, p < 0.001, Figure 4C) and TTR (42.5 versus 52.1 months, p = 0.014, Figure 4D; log‐rank test for each comparison).