Mammalian target of rapamycin as a novel target in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Several studies have discovered that PI3K/Akt/ mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway played an important role in the development of cancer. In this study, we examined the effects of antisense pEGFP-C1-mTOR on cell proliferation, apoptosis and migration of human hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines, HepG2 and SMMC7721 in vitro. We also observed the expression of mTOR and Akt by using RT-PCR and western blot. Our results showed that treatment of cells with antisense pEGFP-C1-mTOR could induce human hepatocellular carcinoma cells' growth inhibition, apoptosis and weaken the migration activity. And we observed that the expression of mTOR was significantly decreased in the cells treated with antisense pEGFP-C1-mTOR and interestingly we discovered that the phosphorylation AKT expression was slightly increased. It indicated that there existed a negative feedback effect which might decrease the therapeutic effects of antisense pEGFP-C1-mTOR. Therefore, we conceive that targeting to inhibit the expression of mTOR in combination with AKT inactivate may increase clinical effectiveness in hepatocellular carcinoma's treatment.