Neural cells generated from 36 iPSC lines were examined, including two independent lines from each of 15 donors and one line each from an additional 6 donors. iPSCs were differentiated into forebrain lineage neural cultures using an embryoid body-based protocol developed by the WiCell Institute (#SOP-CH-207 Rev A, www.wicell.org, Madison, WI). For details on the neural differentiation methods used see (Lieberman et al., 2012). Mature cultures (12 weeks post-neural plating) generated using this protocol contain a mixture of glial cells and neurons with spontaneous electrical activity, functional ionotropic GABAA and glutamate receptors, and the ability to generate action potentials (Lieberman et al., 2012). A comparison of transcriptome profiles for human iPSC-derived forebrain lineage neural cultures and human post-mortem brain tissue suggests that 6–12 week iPSC neural cultures have a gene expression profile most similar to first trimester forebrain tissue (Brennand et al., 2014, Mariani et al., 2012).
