dendrify and differentiate. Moreover, induction by retinoic acid results in inhibition of cell growth and enhanced production of noradrenaline from SH-SY5Y cells Media and Cultivation The most common growing cocktail used is a 1:1 mixture of DMEM and Ham's F12 medium and 10% supplemental fetal bovine serum. The DMEM usually contains 3.7 g/L sodium bicarbonate, 2 mM L-Glutamine, 1 mM sodium pyruvate and 0.1 mM nonessential amino acids. The cells are always grown at 37 degrees Celsius with 95% air and 5% carbon dioxide. It is advised to cultivate the cells in flasks which are coated for cell culture adhesion, this will aid in differentiation and dendrification of the neuroblastoma. In general the cells are quite robust and will grow in most widely used tissue culture media. However, it has been recently established that DMEM is superior to DMEM:F12 for propagation of SH-SY5Y. The doubling time of SH-SY5Y cells during the exponential phase is 67.3 h ± 5.8 h. The average generation time (G) was 4.23 ± 0.84 d, the division rate per cell unit (r) was 0.25 ± 0.05, and the multiplication factor (V) was 3.49 ± 1.21. SH-SY5Y cells show growth-related parameters that were typical or even superior to many described immortalized tumorderived cell lines. The proliferation capacity is stable over time and also beyond passage 10. SH-SY5Y has a dopamine-β-hydroxylase activity and can convert dopamine to norepinephrine. It will also form tumors in nude mice in around 3–4 weeks. The loss of neuronal characteristics has been described with increasing passage numbers. Therefore, it is recommended not to be used after passage 20 or verify specific characteristics such as noradrenaline uptake or neuronal tumor markers. References External links Cellosaurus entry for SH-SY5Y ATCC- American Type Culture Collection, a source of SH-SY5Y cells and other biologicials ATTC product data for SH-SY5Y cells, catalog CRL-2266 Sigma Product Page Human cell lines Cancer research