This suggests a dopamine-norepinephrine pathway block, which supports previous reports of deficiency of dopamine beta-hydroxylase activity in some neuroblastomas.
DNase I hypersensitive sites were found in the 5'-flanking region of the DBH gene in noradrenergic human neuroblastoma SK-N-BE(2)C cells, but not in DBH-nonexpressing HeLa cells.
In the present study, we used DBH-expressing human neuroblastoma SK-N-BE(2)C and rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cell lines to investigate the role of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) in transcriptional regulation of the DBH gene.
These results strongly support the conclusion that recombinant human DBH from Drosophila S2 cells can be used in place of human neuroblastoma-derived DBH for drug screening, characterization of the enzyme's physicochemical properties, and determination of structure-function relationships.
Both reporter gene assays revealed a neuroblastoma-selective expression mediated by NSEp and THp, whereas DBHp was active only in a murine neuroblastoma cell line.
In the present study, we validated the ability of 14 commonly used real-time RT-PCR markers to detect MRD based on their expression in neuroblastoma TICs, and we developed a novel MRD detection protocol, which scored the samples as MRD-positive when the expression of one of the 11 real-time RT-PCR markers (CHRNA3, CRMP1, DBH, DCX, DDC, GABRB3, GAP43, ISL1, KIF1A, PHOX2B and TH) exceeded the normal range.