Generating regionalized neuronal cells from pluripotency, a step-by-step protocol

• Main Authors: Agnete eKirkeby, Jenny eNelander, Malin eParmar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-01-01
• Series: Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
• Subjects: Pluripotent Stem Cells; differentiation; Brain Development; regionalization; GSK3; human embryonic stem cells
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fncel.2012.00064/full

Human pluripotent stem cells possess the potential to generate cells for regenerative therapies in patients with neurodegenerative diseases, and constitute an excellent cell source for studying human neural development and disease modeling. Protocols for neural differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells have undergone significant progress during recent years, allowing for rapid and synchronized neural conversion. Differentiation procedures can further be combined with accurate and efficient positional patterning to yield regionalized neural progenitors and subtype-specific neurons corresponding to different parts of the developing human brain. Here, we present a step-by-step protocol for neuralization and regionalization of human pluripotent cells for transplantation studies or in vitro analysis.