Involvement of autophagy related factors in liver cancer cells after treatment with panobinostat

Background: Liver cancer is the most widely diffused solid tumor with a poor prognosis and its treatment with common chemotherapeutic agents has not shown a significant improvement in patient care. We have shown previously that panobinostat (LBH589), a pan-deacetylase inhibitor (DACi), is able to induce cell death in the liver cancer cell lines HepG2 and Hep3B through involvement of endoplasmatic reticulum (ER) stress related apoptotic pathways; moreover, panobinostat significantly reduced the tumor growth of HepG2 xenografts in NMRI mice. Our aim is to demonstrate the implication of autophagy mechanism in cell…