Figure 2. Major pharmacological classes promoting the dopaminergic neuronal differentiation of human NPCs.

(A) The primary screen results of 2 TGF-βRI inhibitors (dash line boxed) and 2 statin molecules (dash and dot line boxed), shown are the whole well images of 384-well plate stained with TH antibody. The positive stained cells were pointed with red arrow heads for clarity as the image sizes are greatly reduced from the original. (B) Quantification of the cell differentiation rate in the validation experiments. The TH+ % was calculated as the number of TH+ cells divided by the number of total cells. The rate in the control wells treated with DMSO was normalized to 1. The compound concentrations are: LY364947 3 μM; D4476 2 μM; mevastatin 1 μM; pravastatin 1 μM. Controls received equal volume of DMSO treatment. *P < 0.05. Scale bar, 200 μm.