Differentiation of IMR32 Neuroblastoma Is Accompanied by a Global Change in the Transcriptome.

Neuroblastoma is one of the most common cancers in infants and is often multidrug-resistant. One of the methods of treating neuroblastomas is to create conditions for their differentiation. In this work, we performed a full-transcriptome analysis of gene expression in an undifferentiated and differentiated in vitro human neuroblastoma cell line IMR-32 and identified the signaling pathways and biological processes that undergo the greatest changes during differentiation. The results obtained show that a complex heterogeneous population of nerve cells is formed at different stages of differentiation. In the cell population of differentiating neuroblastoma, the expression of genes in which cortical neuronal progenitor cells are enriched increases; at the same time, there are cells expressing markers of early postmitotic neurons. Cells differentiate in several different directions according to the type of synaptic mediator. At the same time, the differentiation of IMR-32 cells is accompanied by an increase in the transcription of genes that suppress the differentiation of nerve cells, Sox2 and PROM1, the expression of which is normally suppressed during in vivo differentiation.