Broad transcriptomic impact of Sorafenib and its relation to the antitumoral properties in liver cancer cells

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth most frequent cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. While ablation, resection and orthotopic liver transplantation are indicated at an early stage of the disease, Sorafenib (Sfb) is the current most administrated first-line treatment for advanced HCC, even thought its therapeutic benefit is limited as a consequence of the appearance of resistances. Deep knowledge on the molecular consequences of Sfb-treatment is essentially required for optimizing novel therapeutic strategies to improve the outcomes for patients with advanced HCC. In this study, we analysed differential gene expression changes in two well characterized HCC cell lines upon a Sfb-treatment, demonstrating that both lines responded similarly to the treatment. Our results provide valuable information on the molecular action of Sfb on diverse cellular fundamental processes such as DNA repair, translation and proteostasis and identify rationalization issues that could give a different therapeutic perspective to Sfb. Overall design: Examination of trasncriptome of two differents hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines, HepG2 and SNU423. Three biological replicates were used for HepG2 cells and two for SNU423.