The human liver carcinoma cell line HepG2 was provided by Tianjin Medical University General Hospital (Tianjin, China). The cells were seeded in 6-well plates (Corning, USA) at a density of 7.5 × 10⁴ cells/well and cultured in the Dulbecco’s modified Eagle medium (Gibco, USA) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (Biological Industries, Israel) and 1% penicillin/streptomycin in a 5% CO₂ humidified incubator at 37 °C. Based on our previous study, the ATV and DXM steady-state concentration in rat plasma was 26–125 nM, and 280–400 nM, respectively when the rats were orally administered with 0.27 mg/100g ATV and 0.02 mg/100g DXM. Thus, HepG2 cells were treated with 0.1% DMSO, 100 nM ATV, 400 nM DXM, 100 nM ATV, and 400 nM DXM for 3 days. Meanwhile, Cell Counting Kit-8 was used to detect the cytotoxicity of 100 nM ATV and 400 nM DXM on HepG2 cells following the manufacturer’s protocol. Finally, absorption intensity was measured at 450 nm using a microplate reader (Thermo, USA).