Patent ID: 8609413

Claim:
A method of preparing one or more neuronal cells in vitro, comprising: a) exposing substantially or essentially undifferentiated mammalian pluripotent or neural stem cells to an effective amount of a differentiation agent under conditions sufficient to enhance differentiation of the stem cells to neural precursor cells as compared to differentiation under similar conditions without the differentiation agent; and b) incubating the neural precursor cells in the absence of the differentiation agent under conditions sufficient to differentiate the neural precursor cells into neurons, astrocytes or oligodendrocytes; wherein the differentiation agent is a pyridine derivative having the following structure: wherein: the six membered ring defined by W 1 , W 2 and carbon atoms 1, 2, 3 and 4, may be aromatic or non-aromatic, and further wherein any two neighboring atoms of this six membered ring may be singly or doubly bonded to one another; Z 1 and Z 2 are either carbon or nitrogen, further wherein Z 1 and Z 2 may be singly, doubly, or triply bonded to one another and wherein Z 2 and carbon atom 1 may be singly or doubly bonded to one another, provided that the bond between Z 1 and Z 2 is not triple when Z 1 and Z 2 are nitrogen, further provided that the bond between Z 1 and Z 2 is single when the bond between Z 2 and carbon atom 1 is double; Ar is a heteroatom-substituted or heteroatom-unsubstituted aryl( C1-C12 ); one of either W 1 and W 2 is nitrogen and the other is carbon; R 1 , R 2 , and R 3 are independently hydrogen, hydroxy, amino, cyano, halo, nitro, mercapto, or a heteroatom-substituted or heteroatom-unsubstituted alkyl( C1-C8 ), aryl( C1-C8 ), aralkyl( C2-C8 ), acyl( C1-C8 ), alkoxy( C1-C8 ), alkylamino( C1-C8 ), or ═O; or pharmaceutically acceptable salts, hydrates, tautomers, acetals, ketals, hemiacetals, hemiketals, or optical isomers thereof .