Effects of Sorafenib and Quercetin Alone or in Combination in Treating Hepatocellular Carcinoma: In Vitro and In Vivo Approaches

Sorafenib is the first drug approved to treat advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and continues as the gold-standard therapy against HCC. However, acquired drug resistance represents a main concern about sorafenib therapy. The flavanol quercetin found in plants has shown great anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties. In this work, quercetin was used as a therapeutic agent alone or in combination with a sorafenib chemotherapy drug to improve the routine HCC treatment with sorafenib. The in vitro and in vivo results presented here confirm that quercetin alone or in combination with sorafenib significantly inhibited HCC growth, induced cell cycle arrest and induced apoptosis and necrosis. Further molecular data shown in this report demonstrate that quercetin alone or combined with sorafenib downregulated key inflammatory, proliferative and angiogenesis-related genes (TNF-α, VEGF, P53 and NF-κB). Combined quercetin/sorafenib treatment markedly improved the morphology of the induced liver damage and showed significant antioxidant and anti-tumor effects. The advantage of combined treatment efficacy reported here can be attributed to quercetin’s prominent effects in modulating cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, oxidative stress and inflammation.