Dear Lauren, if the idea is to develop an assay, you can use cell lines of course and any of those would as goog or as bad...But if the idea is really to have a model of microglia to study the inflammatory reaction of these cells I would not use cell lines. Whatever the actual origin of these cells (and I think that there is no real doubt that they derive from progenitors born in the yolk sac) it is clear now that they adapt with an exeptional plasticity to their environment. For this reason, the trend is rather to go for more integrated models (and if possible in vivo experiments) than to use pure microglia culture or cell lines. Phenotype and reactivity of microglia will be dictated by the presence of astrocytes, neurons, oligos, blood vessels and by their interactions with blood cells through the BBB. If you really have to work in vitro I would rather use slice cultures in which most, but no all, these components are present and in which you can replace and manipulate microglia (see Knut Biber's recent papers on this model). 

Dear Lauren

Please http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612729/pdf/nihms76523.pdf.

pp

Microglia is higly specialized in its environment. PBMCs are not a good model of it. Try a search here, there was some topic on microglia already.

@ Paritosh Prashar: Yes please I would love a complete protocol thank you.

Microglia and Myeloid cells come from distinct developmental origins (http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fncel.2013.00045/full), and it is now becoming more appreciated that microglia and myeloid cells may have different responses to stimuli in neurodegeneration. There are several protocols to either make primary microglia from P0 to P3 pups, or you could pull down adult microglia using some bead kits or use FACS. If you want to study microglial inflammation I would highly suggest that you use some source of primary microglia or at least BV2 cell line. 

I think the THP-1's will be okay just for assay development--they're cheaper and reproduce more readily. I think the jury's still out as to whether microglia descend from HSCs as other macrophages, but it looks like the HSCs and the microglia share an erythromyeloid progenitor. Again, this is assay development. I appreciate all the help from everyone.

You can obtain microglia easy using rats. You can obtain wistar rats and after from pregnancy rats you can obtain microglia killing thr fetus

Dear Lauren, if the idea is to develop an assay, you can use cell lines of course and any of those would as goog or as bad...But if the idea is really to have a model of microglia to study the inflammatory reaction of these cells I would not use cell lines. Whatever the actual origin of these cells (and I think that there is no real doubt that they derive from progenitors born in the yolk sac) it is clear now that they adapt with an exeptional plasticity to their environment. For this reason, the trend is rather to go for more integrated models (and if possible in vivo experiments) than to use pure microglia culture or cell lines. Phenotype and reactivity of microglia will be dictated by the presence of astrocytes, neurons, oligos, blood vessels and by their interactions with blood cells through the BBB. If you really have to work in vitro I would rather use slice cultures in which most, but no all, these components are present and in which you can replace and manipulate microglia (see Knut Biber's recent papers on this model).