A Comparison of Whole Genome Gene Expression Profiles of HepaRG Cells and HepG2 Cells to Primary Human Hepatocytes and Human Liver Tissues

HepaRG cells, derived from a female hepatocarcinoma patient, are capable of differentiating into biliary epithelial cells and hepatocytes. More importantly, differentiated HepaRG cells are able to maintain activities of many xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes, and expression of the metabolizing enzyme genes can be induced by xenobiotics. The ability of these cells to express and induce xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes is in stark contrast to the frequently used HepG2 cells. The previous studies have mainly focused on a set of selected genes; therefore, it is of significant interest to know the extent of similarity of gene expression at whole genome levels in HepaRG cells and HepG2 cells compared with primary human hepatocytes and human liver tissues. To accomplish this objective, we used Affymetrix (Santa Clara, CA) U133 Plus 2.0 arrays to characterize the whole genome gene expression profiles in triplicate