Astrocytes

Astrocytes are the most abundant glial cells in the central nervous system. Besides their general supportive role to the central nervous system, astrocytes serve many housekeeping functions, including maintenance of neuronal metabolism and neurotransmitter synthesis, connection between neuronal activity and cerebral blood flow, modulation of synaptic function through glutamate transporters, and stimulation of adult neurogenesis upon injury, etc. Many central nervous system disorders have been associated with abnormalities in astrocytes, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington disease.

XCell has developed a proprietary process to produce high quality and large quantities of astrocytes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). These astrocytes possess major functionalities of primary human astrocytes and thus are suitable for a variety of applications: