MCL1 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Western blot analysis demonstrated that MLN2238 induced Mcl-1 increase in a dose-dependent manner in all HCC cell lines at 24 h (Fig. 5a), whereas at 48 h, the levels of Mcl-1 decreased in HepG2 and SNU475 cells, and remained higher than the control in Hep3B cells (Fig. 5b).