RESUMO
PURPOSE: Hepatocellar carcinoma (HCC) remains a major health problem being the third leading cause of deaths due to cancer worldwide. Because HCC is known to be highly resistant to conventional systemic therapies, single-agent or combination of systemic therapies have been investigated. Today, sorafenib, a multikinase inhibitor, is the only approved systemic agent for the first line treatment of advanced HCC. In this study, we aimed to investigate the influence of different concentrations of cisplatin, doxorubicin, pegylated doxorubicin (PLD), oxaliplatin and gemcitabine by applying these agents either single or in combinations on mahlavu cell line. METHODS: HCC mahlavu cell line was used for the experiments. Cell death was measured by flow cytometry at 48 hrs after incubation with various concentrations (0.1 µg/ml, 1.0 µg/ml and 10 µg/ml) of the drugs. RESULTS: Cell death due to gemcitabine was found to be significantly higher than cell deaths caused by the other single agents including cisplatin, oxaliplatin, doxorubicin and PLD (p<0.001, p<0.001, p<0.001 and p=0.0049, respectively). There was no significant difference between gemcitabine and both the gemcitabine combination with doxorubicin and PLD (p=0.992 and p=0.441, respectively). CONCLUSION: This is a preliminary analysis evaluating the effect of the conventional chemotherapeutic agents on mahlavu cell line in vitro. The findings of this study suggest that gemcitabine-based therapies keep on being the prefered therapeutic approach for the treatment of HCC.