Inhibit Histone Deacetylases (HDACs) with Valproic Acid (VPA). This epigenetic modifier modulates osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (Cho et al. J Cell Biochem, 2005), and together with other factors, it allows for the direct lineage reprogramming of fibroblasts to mature neurons (Hu et al. Cell Stem Cell, 2015) and the reprogramming of human fibroblasts to iPS cells (Huangfu et al. Nat Biotechnol, 2008). VPA is used to promote the proliferation and self-renewal of human and mouse hematopoietic progenitor cells (Bug et al. Cancer Res, 2005, De Felice et al. Cancer Res, 2005) and suppress differentiation of astrocytes and oligodendrocytes from rat neural progenitor cells (Hsieh et al. Natl Acad Sci USA, 2004, Jung et al. BMC Cell Biol, 2008). Valproic Acid is supplied as a sodium salt of the molecule with ≥ 95% purity; Molecular weight 166.2 g/mol; CAS number 1069-66-5. Visit STEMCELL.com for more information and related products.