ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Predictive Toxicology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1690384
This article is part of the Research TopicShaping the Future of Predictive Toxicology: Addressing Challenges and New Approach MethodologiesView all 8 articles
Changes in cultivation parameters impact cytochrome P450 gene transcription in HepaRG cells: implications for in vitro toxicological assessments
Provisionally accepted- Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Berlin, Germany
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The HepaRG cell line has become a widely used model for liver toxicity testing due to the expression of cytochrome P450 enzymes essential for phase I metabolism of endogenous and exogenous compounds. As variations in expression may pose human health risks, determining CYP interactions of substances is crucial in toxicity assessments. Therefore, the use of human liver cell lines, such as HepaRG, for regulatory hazard assessment requires reproducible and stable CYP enzyme expression, despite possible influencing factors, such as seeding cell number, partial cell monolayer damage, and mRNA extraction timepoint. Transcriptional changes of 12 major CYP genes in relation to changes in cultivation parameters were investigated. To this end, HepaRG cells were cultivated according to two different methods and analyzed by RT-qPCR. Cells were seeded at five densities per cultivation method and mRNA was extracted at two timepoints after completion of differentiation, also comparing extracts from undamaged and intentionally damaged cell monolayers. A Bayesian regression model showed timepoint and cell number to have the most impact on transcription. Transcription was decreased at very high and very low cell numbers over recommended numbers, but this effect was strongly modulated by extraction timepoint, with transcription increasing after two additional weeks in culture. Intentional damage to the cell monolayer had marginal effects on transcription, and no evidence of an effect of cultivation method was found. In summary, extraction timepoint and seeding cell number are the two critical parameters to consider before initiating a CYP expression experiment with HepaRG cells.
Keywords: cell number, Cultivation method, damage, timepoint, PCR, brms, CYP, HepaRG
Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jochum, Städele and Marx-Stoelting. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Philip Marx-Stoelting, philip.marx-stoelting@bfr.bund.de
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.