Hello Indranil De

It depends upon the duration of Retinoic acid (RA) treatment in SH-SY5Y cells. Please refer to the research article below.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1471-4159.2000.0750991.x?sid=nlm%3Apubmed

Effects of long-term RA treatment in SH-SY5Y cells:

The SH-SY5Y cell line is a third successive subclone of the SK-N-SH line, originally established from a bone marrow biopsy of a neuroblastoma patient. The SK-N-SH parental line comprises at least two morphologically and biochemically distinct phenotypes: neuroblastic (N-type) and substrate adherent (S-type), which can undergo transdifferentiation. Although derived from a neuroblastic subclone, the SH-SY5Y line retains a low proportion of S-type cells. When cultures were treated with 10 μM RA for 5 days in complete medium (DMEM plus 15% fetal calf serum), a considerable proportion of neuroblastic (N-type) cells differentiated to a more neuronal phenotype by extending neuritic processes, whereas S-type cells did not undergo apparent morphological changes. Moreover, after ∼ 10 days of culture in the presence of RA, the percentage of S-type cells progressively increased, overgrowing the cultures in the subsequent days. To quantify the effects of RA in the cell proliferation rate, a growth curve was generated in the presence or absence of RA. RA inhibited the growth rate of SH-SY5Y cells during the first 8-10 days of treatment. However, longer periods of incubation with RA progressively increased the total number of cells owing to the accumulation of S-type cells. Thus, although short RA treatments were able to inhibit cell proliferation and induced a modest degree of neuronal differentiation, long-term treatments with this drug did not yield a homogeneously neuronal differentiated population. Actually, long-term RA treatments seemed to unbalance the proportion between the N-type and S-type phenotypes toward the S-type one.

I hope this will answer your question.

Best.

Thanks Malcolm Nobre