We found that telomere length tends to be synchronously decreased in tumor cells and CAFs. A positive correlation (p < 0.01, r = 0.2) was revealed between the intensities of telomeres in the two cell types (Figure 3D), which implied potential cooperation between them in a cancer‐promoting effect. To confirm the result, the relative telomere length (RTL) of tumor and peritumor tissue pairs (n = 24) as well as isolated CAF and NTF pairs (n = 10) was assessed by qPCR, which indicated consistent results with FISH (supplementary material, Table S2). In brief, the RTL of peritumor tissues (median 0.92; IQR 0.89–1.02) was higher than that of tumor tissues (median 0.45; IQR 0.35–0.55; p < 0.001) (supplementary material, Figure S3A). Likewise, the RTL decreased in CAFs (median 1.50; IQR 1.15–1.64) compared with NTFs (median 2.06; IQR 1.68–2.34; p < 0.01) (supplementary material, Figure S3B). In addition, the RTL of leukocytes isolated from ten patient samples showed no differences between PTILs (median 1.66; IQR 1.05‐1–81) and TILs (median 1.64; IQR 1.02–1.97; p = 0.945) (supplementary material, Figure S3C). The statistics of telomere‐specific FISH variables are shown in the supplementary material, Table S2. Since telomere lengths are maintained by reactivation of telomerase in the majority of human malignancies 27, we also detected the mRNA level of telomerase by real‐time RT‐PCR in 64 HCC patients and found a positive correlation between TERT mRNA level and RTL (p < 0.0001, r = 0.806) (supplementary material, Figure S3D).