Previous studies have shown that halofuginone inhibits MMP-2 and MMP-9 in cancer and liver tissues (Taras et al., 2006; Zcharia et al., 2012; Jin et al., 2014), while SIS3 reduces TGFβ1-induced MMP activity in HCC1806 cells (Kim et al., 2016). Here, MMP9 is linked to cancer.