We induced iPSCs to differentiate towards NPCs by retinoic acid (RA) treatment and neurosphere formation based on a published protocol (Figure 1a) [25]. After 18 days of differentiation, both N-iPSCs and AD-iPSCs displayed typical morphological feature of NPCs and more than 90% of the cells expressed NPC markers (Nestin and SOX2) (Figure 1b). In addition, we found that the apoptosis and proliferation capacity of NPCs was indistinguishable between N-iPSC-derived NPCs (N-NPCs) and AD-NPCs when cultured in the NPC medium containing basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) (Figure 1c-1g). Therefore, our results showed that mutations in PSEN1 did not disrupt the normal survival and proliferation of AD-NPCs.
