Sorafenib

Methoxy poly(ethylene glycol)-b-poly(ε-caprolactone) copolymer with citraconic amide as a pH-sensitive bond (mPEG-pH-PCL) was purchased from Creative PEGWorks (Chapel Hill, NC, USA). Cremophor EL^®, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), thiazolyl blue tetrazolium bromide (MTT), and crystal violet were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich Corp. (St. Louis, MO, USA). Distilled water (DW), ethanol (EtOH), acetonitrile (ACN), and methanol (MeOH) were purchased from Fisher Scientific (Waltham, MA, USA). PTX, RAPA, and sorafenib were purchased from LC Laboratories^® (Woburn, MA, USA). ETP was purchased from Tokyo Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. (Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan). Sodium chloride (NaCl), potassium phosphate monobasic (KH₂PO₄), potassium chloride (KCl), sodium phosphate dibasic anhydrous (Na₂HPO₄), and 0.1 N hydrochloric acid (HCI) standard solution were purchased from Duksan (Seoul, Korea) and were used for the manufacturing of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). All other reagents and solvents were analytical grade or high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) grade.

Sunitinib malate was kindly provided by Pfizer Oncology (New York, NY). Sorafenib, pazopanib, erlotinib hydrochloride, lapatinib di-p-toluenesulfonate and everolimus were purchased from LC Laboratories (Woburn, MA). All drugs were prepared as 20 mM stock solutions in DMSO (Sigma-Aldrich), except erlotinib hydrochloride, which was prepared as a 10 mM stock solution in 96% DMSO/4% H₂O. All stock solutions were stored at −80 °C.

The agent 3-BP was obtained from Sigma-Aldrich, Inc. (St. Louis, MO, USA). Sorafenib was purchased from LC laboratories (Woburn, MA, USA).

Cells were seeded into 96‐well plates and treated with different concentrations of sorafenib (catalognumber, S‐8502; LC Laboratories, Shanghai, China). Cell viability was examined by MTT assay. The half inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) value was determined for each HCC cell line. To evaluate the effect of lncRNA, cell viability was measured 96 hours after transfection using the MTT assay (Dojindo, Kumamoto, Japan) according to the manufacturer's instructions.