Meclizine hydrochloride is an antihistamine widely used for treatment of vertigo and motion
sickness. In HCC it has been used for anti-emetic effects, but it is used here as a CAR
(constitutive androstane receptor) inverse agonist.
The hypothesis of this study is that Meclizine, CAR inverse agonist, will have beneficial
therapeutic effect in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who are candidates for surgical
resection, ablation, TACE, Y90 or systemic therapy by blocking tumorigenesis and inducing
apoptosis. The effects of Meclizine will be analyzed by measuring messenger RNA level of CAR
target genes CYP2B6, c-Myc and FoxM1, the downstream effectors of CAR, by real time
quantitative PCR.