Treatment of Neuroblastoma Cells with Inhibitors of Protein Disulfide Isomerase Upregulates NQO1 Activity

Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) is associated with many diseases including neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and, hence, is considered a promising drug target. This study employs the two PDI inhibitors securinine and 16F16 in order to interrogate the role of PDI in the neurological disease and presents a novel link between PDI inhibition and NQO1 activity Microarrays were used to analyze the global change in gene expression as a result of PDI inhibition in the human neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y SH-SY5Y cells were treated with the PDI inhibitors securinine (30 uM) or 16F16 (4 uM) for 24 h followed by extraction of the global RNA. The RNA was subjected to an Affymetrix® Human Gene 2.0 ST Array