Transferrin treatment promotes differentiation of cortical neurons in vitro

JUANA M. PASQUINI; PÉREZ MARÍA JULIA; CARDEN TOMÁS ROBERTO

Riverside, California

Congreso; American Society for Neurochemistry meeting 2018; 2018

Transferrin (Tf) is a glycoprotein best known for its role in irondelivery. However, multiple groups have attributed iron-independent functions to it. In some tissues, it has been reported to favorproliferation and differentiation of certain cell types. As a matter offact, previous studies performed in our laboratory have shown thatapoTransferrin accelerates the differentiation of oligodendrocytes invitro as well as in vivo (Escobar Cabrera et al., 1997; Paez et al.,2005), that it commits neural stem cells from neurosphere culturestoward an oligodendroglial lineage (Silvestroff et al., 2012) and thatit can also modulate proliferation and activation of microglia invitro.In the present work, we aimed to determine the effects of Tf addition to the culture medium on neuronal cultures. As a first approach,we assessed Tf effects on Neuro-2a cells (N2a), a mouse neuroblastoma cell line which, once differentiated, share many propertieswith neurons, including process outgrowth, expression of selectiveneuronal markers and electric activity. We first examined the Tf-Tfreceptor system in our model and verified that N2a are capable ofinternalizing Tf added to the culture medium. Next, we studied anumber of cellular response parameters and concluded that Tf increases N2a survival through a decrease in apoptosis. Finally,neurite outgrowth assays revealed that Tf treatment accelerates neurite outgrowth.We then tested if the aforementioned pro-differentiation effects ofTf observed in N2a cells also occurred in primary cultures ofcortical neurons, and found that, indeed, neurons also respond to Tfaddition differentiating at a higher rate than their controlcounterparts.