Novel Combination of Mesenchymal Stem Cell-Conditioned Medium with Sorafenib Have Synergistic Antitumor Effect of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells

Abstract

Objective: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common liver malignancy. Sorafenib is the first-line<br />systemic treatment for advanced HCCs. However, due to safety concerns, researchers are now looking for ways to boost<br />the efficacy of the medication. One approach for reducing toxicity is combining sorafenib with other agents so that a<br />lower dose of sorafenib is required. Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) can have an inhibitory effect on HCC tumor<br />growth. Mesenchymal Stem Cell-Conditioned Medium (MSC-CM) is the substance extracted from MSC culture and<br />contains most of the potential cytokines secreted by MSCs. We, therefore, anticipated a synergistic Antitumor Effect<br />of sorafenib in Combination with MSC-CM. In this study, we used HepG2 as our target cell lines. Methods: HepG2<br />cells were treated with sorafenib alone and with sorafenib + MSC-CM. CCK-8 assay was used to evaluate and compare<br />the inhibition of cell growth between the two groups with different treatments. Results: The combination treatment of<br />cell lines with sorafenib and MSC-CM had significantly reduced the values of IC50 compared to the use of sorafenib<br />alone (3.4 vs. 2.7 respectively). Conclusion: This study suggests that a combination of sorafenib with MSC-CM can<br />synergistically suppress the growth of HCC cells.