A preclinical evaluation of a novel multikinase inhibitor, SKLB-329, as a therapeutic agent against hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a serious life-threatening malignant disease of liver. Molecular targeted therapies are considered a promising strategy for the treatment of HCC. Sorafenib is the first, and so far the only targeted drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical therapy of HCC. Despite being effective in some HCC patients, some demerits of sorafenib in the treatment of HCC, such as modest survival benefits, and drug resistance, have also been reported, which highlights the unmet medical need among patients with HCC. Here, we report a novel multikinase inhibitor discovered by us, SKLB-329, which potently inhibits angiogenesis-related kinases including VEGFR1/2/3, and FGFR2, and the Src kinase. SKLB-329 significantly inhibited endothelial cell growth, migration, invasion and tube formation. It showed potent anti-angiogenic activity in a transgenic zebrafish model. Moreover, SKLB-329 could efficiently restrain the proliferation of HCC cells through down-regulation of Src-mediated FAK and Stat3 activity. In vivo, oral administration of SKLB-329 considerably suppressed the tumor growth in HCC xenograft models (HepG2 and SMMC7721) in a dose-dependent manner. In all of the in vitro and in vivo assays of this investigation, sorafenib was used as a positive control, and in most assays SKLB-329 exhibited a higher potency compared with the positive control. In addition, SKLB-329 also bears favorable pharmacokinetic properties. Collectively, the results of preclinical studies presented here demonstrate that SKLB-329 is a promising drug candidate for HCC treatment.