“…Like HL-60 cells, PLB-985 is a bipotential cell line that can be differentiated along the granulocytic pathway with compounds like dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (Tucker et al, 1987), dimethylformamide (DMF) (Katschinski et al, 1999) or dibutyryl cyclic AMP (dbcAMP) (Hazan-Eitan et al, 2006), and toward the monocytic pathway with 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D3 (Perkins et al, 1991), phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) (Perkins et al, 1991) or interferon-g (Hazan-Eitan et al, 2006). The PLB-985 cell line has been widely utilised to monitor activity of NADPH oxidase and production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) (Boulven et al, 2006;Fay et al, 2006;Pessach et al, 2006;Taylor et al, 2006;van Bruggen et al, 2004), but the other functional responses like degranulation and phagocytosis have been less characterised, or restricted to one type of differentiating agent (Hazan-Eitan et al, 2006;Pedruzzi et al, 2002). A recent paper reported that DMSO-differentiated PLB-985 cells responded like blood neutrophils in terms of inflammatory cytokine production and transcription factor activation, and were readily amenable to transient transfection (Ear and McDonald 2008).…”