lithium chloride can induce differentiation of human immortalized renvm cells into dopaminergic neurons

Background: stem cell-based therapy is a novel strategy for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. the transplantation of fully differentiated cells instead of stem cells in order to decrease serious adverse complications of stem cell therapy is a new idea. in this study, the effect of lithium chloride on dopaminergic differentiation of human immortalized renvm cells was investigated in order to access a population of fully differentiated cells for transplantation in parkinson disease. methods: the immortalized renvm cells were induced to dopaminergic differentiation using a neurobasal medium supplemented with n2 and different concentrations (1, 3, 6 mm) of lithium chloride (licl) for 4, 8 and 12 days. the efficiency of dopaminergic differentiation was evaluated using immunocytochemistry and western blot techniques for tyrosine hydroxylase and β-catenin marker expression. results: our results indicated that licl can promote dopaminergic differentiation of renvm cells in a dose-dependent manner. conclusion: it can be concluded that licl is able to facilitate dopaminergic differentiation of cultured cells by affecting wnt-frizzled signaling pathway.