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

Document Type : Research Articles

Authors

1 Tissue Engineering and Applied cell Sciences,Tehran University of Medical Sciences,Tehran, Iran.

2 Food and Drug Control Laboratory (FDCL),Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education,Tehran, Iran.

3 School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Tehran, Iran.

4 Department of Microbiology, Qom Branch,Islamic Azad University, Qom, Iran.

5 Nutrition and Food Technology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

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

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