Patent 7195879 was granted and assigned to Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical on March, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention provides methods to manipulate differentiation of a neuroblastoma cell line (IMR-32) such that predominant Nav expression is either Nav1.3 in IMR-32 cells exposed to retinoic acid or Nav1.7 in cells grown under non-differentiating conditions. The cells of the present invention are useful for the discovery of new compounds that modulate the function of either Nav1.3 and/or Nav1.7.