Glial scar brain and spinal cord. FGF2 has also been shown to increase astrocyte proliferation "in vitro". Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) is a cytosolic protein that is not secreted. CNTF has been shown to promote the survival of neuronal cultures "in vitro", and it can also act as a differentiator and trophic factor on glial cells. Further, CNTF has been previously shown to affect the differentiation of glial precursor cells "in vitro"; however, the influence of CNTF in the "in vivo" setting has only recently been determined. Winter "et al." used CNTF over-expressing transgenic mice as well as wildtype controls that had
Glial fibrillary acidic protein Glial fibrillary acidic protein Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) is a protein that is encoded by the "GFAP" gene in humans. Glial fibrillary acidic protein is an intermediate filament (IF) protein that is expressed by numerous cell types of the central nervous system (CNS) including astrocytes and ependymal cells during development. GFAP has also been found to be expressed in glomeruli and peritubular fibroblasts taken from rat kidneys Leydig cells of the testis in both hamsters and humans, human keratinocytes, human osteocytes and chondrocytes and stellate cells of the pancreas and liver in rats. First described in 1971, GFAP is