Astrocytes are ubiquitous in the brain and have multiple functions. It is becoming clear that they play an important role in monitoring the neuromicroenvironment, information processing, signaling in the central nervous system (CNS) in normal conditions and respond to CNS injuries. During the development of the CNS, astrocytes playa key role as a substrate for neuronal migration and axonal growth. In the CNS, anti-inflammatory cytokines are produced by microglia and astroglial cells. To identify genes which could participate in astrocyte maturaion, we used the differential display RT-PCR (DDRT-PCR) method. Human fetal astrocytes were cultured and total RNA was isolated at intervals of 5 days for 50 days. Using 24 primer combinations, we have identified a set of 18 candidate cDNAs deriving from excised DDRT bands. DNA sequencing revealed that 16 genes are described genes (HMGCR, thyroid receptor interactor gene, NPM, transglutaminase mRNA, SPARC etc.) and 2 genes are unknown genes. We found 9 (G3B, G3C, G4, C1, C3A, C3B, C4, C7A, C7B) of 18 genes were expressed increasingly and 9 (G1, G2, G3A, A3, A6, C2, C3C, C5, C8) genes were expressed decreasingly according to their culture stages. Temporal expression of sequenced genes in this study suggests that the proteins may play different roles during brain development. In the future study, we are focusing to investigate the role of differentially expressed gene in human fetal astrocytes. These unknown genes could be good candidates of regulator gene in human astrocyte development.