To our knowledge, our method is distinct from others recently reported (Chen et al., 2015, Haidet-Phillips et al., 2014, Jiang et al., 2013, Krencik et al., 2011, McGivern et al., 2013, Serio et al., 2013, Shaltouki et al., 2013), its major advantage being the ease by which hiPSC-astrocytes can be concurrently differentiated from many NPCs from multiple individuals, owing to the simplicity of the protocol, and furthermore that astrocytes can be expanded for months and cryopreserved, serving as a source of cells to support an array of experiments. Therefore, because our protocols for NPC and astrocyte culture are robust and easily scaled, this methodology is both preferable for large case-control studies from dozens of idiopathic patients and highly amenable to automated culture and future high-throughput drug screens using patient-derived astrocytes (Xu et al., 2016).
