PA6 Stromal Cell Co-Culture Enhances SH-SY5Y and VSC4.1 Neuroblastoma Differentiation to Mature Phenotypes

Neuroblastoma cell lines such as SH-SY5Y have been used for modelling neurodegenerative diseases and for studying basic mechanisms in neuroscience. Since neuroblastoma cells proliferate and generally do not express markers of mature or functional neurons, we exploited a co-culture system with the stromal cell line PA6 to better induce differentiation to a more physiologically relevant status. We found that co-culture of the neuroblastoma cell lines in the presence of neural inducers such retinoic acid was able to generate a high proportion of quiescent neurons with very long neurites expressing differentiation markers. The co-culture system additionally cuts short the time taken to produce a more mature phenotype. We also show the application of this system to study proteins implicated in motor neuron disease.