Development of a stretch-induced neurotrauma model for medium-throughput screening in vitro: identification of rifampicin as a neuroprotectant.

Background And Purpose: We hypothesized that an in vitro, stretch-based model of neural injury may be useful to identify compounds that decrease the cellular damage in neurotrauma.

Experimental Approach: We screened three neural cell lines (B35, RN33B and SH-SY5Y) subjected to two differentiation methods and selected all-trans-retinoic acid-differentiated B35 rat neuroblastoma cells subjected to rapid stretch injury, coupled with a subthreshold concentration of H O , for the screen. The model induced marked alterations in gene expression and proteomic signature of the cells and culminated in delayed cell death (LDH release) and mitochondrial dysfunction [reduced 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) conversion].