Effect of Nerve Growth Factor on Neural Differentiation of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells.

The cholinergic, GABAergic, and catecholaminergic neurons derived from mouse embryonic stem cells in a culture medium supplemented with recombinant NGF were phenotyped and scored. NGF stimulated generation of neurons, but not neuronal progenitors from embryonic stem cells and affected the proportion of specific types of neurons in cultures of differentiating embryonic stem cells. These findings open vista to employ NGF for generation of specific neuron types from embryonic stem cells for fundamental and toxicological studies.