Impact of differentiation media on Cystic Fibrosis airway epithelial cells

In vitro cultures of primary human airway epithelial cells (hAECs) grown at air-liquid interface have become a valuable tool to study airway biology and physiology and for drug discovery in lung diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis (CF). An increasing number of different differentiation media, are now available, making comparison of data between studies difficult. Here we investigated the impact of two common differentiation media on the transcriptome features of CF and non-CF epithelia. RNA-sequencing analysis found 20330 and 19052 transcripts in CF and NCF epithelia, respectively and revealed that 1346 genes were significantly regulated in CF cells compared to 922 in NCF cells. Overall design: mRNA profiles of 3 CF and 3 non-CF (NCF) airway epithelial cell samples differentiated in 2 different media.