Neuro-like differentiation of SH-SY5Y human cell line

Microarray technology has become a very useful tool in studying complex diseases, since it enables to evaluate the expression of thousands of transcripts simultaneously and elucidate known as well as new processes and phenomena. In this context, the diseases that affect the central nervous system remain a challenge for scientists and the search for suitable experimental models that allows correlations with clinical events is crucial. Therefore, it has been proposed that the differentiation model of human neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y into cells with neuronal profile with retinoic acid might be an interesting tool to study neurodegenerative diseases. However, we know little about the mecanisms or the pathways involved in this process of differentiation. Here we conducted a microarray analysis to uncover changes in each phenotype (undifferentiated cells and differentiated cells), thus, elucidating the regulatory networks of this model and extracting molecular signatures of this process. This data consists of 16 microarray samples from SH-SY5Y (ATCC) cell line either untreated or submitted to neuronal differentiation protocols with retinoic acid (RA) only or retinoic acid+BDNF. At the beginning of both differentiation protocols, we decrease FBS concentration in medium to 1% and add 10 uM RA. To evaluate RA-only differentiation stimulation, samples RNA were colleted 4 days and 7 days after FBS decrease to 1% and RA addition. In the RA + BDNF differentiation protocol, in addition to FBS decrease and RA 10 uM, there is an addition of BDNF 50 ng/ml at day 4. The neuronal differentiation process was confirmed by the decrease in cell proliferation rates and increase in neurite density.