Proteome and secretome of HepaRG cells

Primary human hepatocytes, the gold standard for in vitro studies of liver-related functions, suffer from uncertain availability and high variability in cell activity. Over years, a number of alternative hepatic cell lines have lost major liver-like functions, but not HepaRG cells. Therefore, their increasing use worldwide today arouses the need for establishing a reference functional status of differentiated HepaRG cells known as HPR116, which originate from the initial cell bank. Deep proteome and secretome analyses enabled us to show that they nicely express, at levels generally close to those in primary hepatocytes, master regulators of the hepatic phenotype, structural elements that ensure liver-like polarisation and factors supporting their transdifferentiation properties. Their highly differentiated status, mitochondrial functionality, hepatokine secretion ability and response to insulin was verified. Overall, the HepaRG cell system appears as robust surrogate cell system to primary hepatocytes, versatile enough to study not only xenobiotic detoxification but also the control of hepatic energy metabolism, secretory function and disease-related signalling pathways.