Characterization of Human Cell Lines

The human fetal astrocyte cell line SVGA, the human microglial cell line HMC3, and the human neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y were used for our investigations. The SVGA cells were kindly provided by the group of Christine Hanssen Rinaldo, University Hospital of North Norway (Henriksen et al., 2014 (link)) with the permission of Altwood (Schweighardt et al., 2001 (link)). The HMC3 and SH-SY5Y cells were purchased from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC, Manassas, Virginia, USA). SVGA and HMC3 cells were cultured in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM; Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA, USA). SH-SY5Y cells were cultured in a half and half mixture of F12 (ATCC) and Eagle’s minimum essential medium (EMEM). The corresponding media were supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS; PAN-Biotech GmbH, Aidenbach, Germany), 1% penicillin–streptomycin (10,000 U/ml; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA), and 2 mM of additional l-glutamine (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Purity of the cells was ascertained by immunostaining with cell type-specific markers and by the absence mycoplasma contamination. Cell line identity was verified by short tandem repeat profiling as previously described (Adamski et al., 2017 (link)).