The Effect of Sialic Acid on Viability and Growth of Mice Astrocytes and Human Astroglia Cells

The surface of all vertebrate cells is covered with sugar chains like sialic acid that are found at high levels in sialoglycan form in vertebrate brain. There are growing evidences that changes in level of sialic acid may cause neurodegenerative and psychotic disorders. Duo to increasing growth of these diseases, and the important role of sialic acid in causing and progression of neurogenic disease, determination of toxic levels of sialic acid is important to design the in-vitro and in-vivo experiments. So, the goal of this research was evaluation of the proper concentration of sialic acid for brain cell lines.
The human astroglia cells and mice astrocytes were treated with a serial dilution of sialic acid in 96 well plates. Toxic level of sialic acid was examined using MTT assay [3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide or thiazolyl blue].
Findings: The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) for astroglia and astrocyte cells were 1273.3 and 3750 µM, respectively.
Sialic acid has a dose-dependent inhibitory effect on brain cell growth with a significant growth limitation at concentrations higher than the IC50. In addition, the results showed significant differences between the two human and mouse cells, and it was suggested that instead of the mouse model, human brain cells should be used to obtain generalized results for humans.