Objective

Microglia are the innate immune cells of the brain and play critical roles in development and maintenance of the CNS. Dysfunctional microglia activation has been associated with pathological brain inflammation and various neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Studies of microglia function have been restricted to mouse or rat CNS extracts because of the difficulty of isolating human microglia from biospsy or autopsy samples.  In recent years, the development of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) differentiation protocols has provided a source of cells from which to differentiate human neuronal cell types including microglia. This is an important advance in neuronal cell biology and will advance our understanding of microglia function under physiological and pathological conditions.

iPSC-derived microglia precursors can be driven to distinct phenotypes representative of the heterogeneous population of cells within the brain. Here we describe the robust and reproducible differentiation of human microglia-like cells from iPSC and the maturation of these towards distinct functional phenotypes characterised by expression profiling of microglia markers and cytokines released following activation stimuli.