Derivation of microglia-free astrocyte cultures from neural stem cells

Astrocytes play fundamental roles in the establishment and maintenance of tissue homeostasis in the central nervous system (CNS). To examine these different functions in vitro, it is important to be able to generate pure astrocyte cultures. While many "enriched" astrocyte cultures have been described, these are complicated by the presence of other contaminating cell types, such as microglia. In this chapter, we describe a method in which microglia-free astrocyte cultures are generated from neurospheres and also include an immunocytochemical approach to demonstrate the purity of these cultures.