Table 5.

Use of human astrocytes generated from pluripotent stem cells for disease modeling and pathology research.

Disorder	Phenotypes	Culture methods	Potential applications	Reference
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)	Down regulation of VAPB expression, failure of motor neurons	By either direct reprogramming or iPSC-derived NPCs	Generated functional astroglia from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) carrying an ALS-causing TDP-43 mutation	Serio et al., 2013
			Human iPSC-derived astrocytes showed an increase in Cx43 protein,	Almad et al., 2016
Rett syndrome (RTT)	Fewer synapses, reduced dendritic spine density, and soma size	iPSC-derived NPCs	–RTT-iPSCs showed the recapitulation of RTT phenotypes. –MeCP2 seems to have an essential function in astrocytes	Dajani et al., 2013
Alzheimer disease (AD)	Intracellular accumulation of Aβ, increased ROS production, ER stress	Embryoid body formation by dual smad molecules		Kondo et al., 2013
Huntington disorder	Trinucleotide repeat expansion (CAG) in exon 1 of huntington (HTT)	iPSC-derived NPCs	–Generated adult form of HD (F-HD-iPSCs). –Identified a cellular vacuolation phenotype similar to HD patients.	Juopperi et al., 2012