Sorafenib is recommended as the primary therapeutic drug for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. To discover a new compound that avoids low response rates and toxic side effects that occur in sorafenib therapy, we designed and synthesized new hybrid compounds of sorafenib and 2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols. Compound
6
was selected as the best of 24 hybrids that inhibit each of the four Raf kinases. The anti-proliferative activity of
6
in HepG2, Hep3B, and Huh7 cell lines was slightly lower than that of sorafenib. However, in H6c7 and CCD841 normal epithelial cell lines, the cytotoxicity of
6
was much lower than that of sorafenib. In addition, similar to sorafenib, compound
6
inhibited spheroid forming ability of Hep3B cells
in vitro
and tumour growth in a xenograft tumour model of the chick chorioallantoic membrane implanted with Huh7 cells. Compound
6
may be a promising candidate targeting hepatocellular carcinoma with low toxic side effects on normal cells.
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