Morphological differentiation of neuroblastoma cells in medium supplemented with delipidated serum.

Neuroblastoma cells have been found to extend neurites when grown in a medium supplemented with delipidated fetal calf serum. Fetal calf sera from different commercial sources give rise to marked differences in the degree of this spontaneous morphological differentiation. The phenomenon can be prevented by the addition of certain fatty acids; oleic acid is especially effective. The serum-free conditioned medium from glial cells can quantitatively antagonize the effect of oleic acid, suggesting that glial factor activity could be due to components [lipids and/or macromolecular factors(s)] that are able to modify the properties of the neuroblastoma cell membrane.