Chemical chaperones increase surface expression of α7 AChRs on cells, which endogenously express α7 AChRs.

<p>A) Chemical chaperones increase α7 expression in the human neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y. Growth for 24 hours with 10 µM PBA increases binding of ¹²⁵I αBgt to the cell surface by 3 fold. Increasing PBA concentration (300 µM) results in 7.8 fold more α7 AChRs in the cell surface than control cultures. VPA also increased α7 expression with increasing concentrations (100 µM) by 7.3 fold. Together, the maximum concentrations of PBA and VPA produced a somewhat larger effect (10 fold) to control. B) VPA increases binding of ¹²⁵I αBgt to rat hippocampal neuron cultures. Cultures were grown in VPA for 5 days starting at 8 or 15 days <i>in vitro</i> after initiation of the cultures prior to harvest on day 13 or 20 in cultures. PBA was ineffective on these cells (data not shown).