APOE and Alzheimer disease: One of the most interesting DEGs we identified, and discussed here separately from the others mentioned above, is APOE. Our data indicate that microglia could be required to induce astrocyte AD gene expression profiles and speculate that hiMG cytokine production could be the trigger for APOE expression in astrocytes since a crosstalk of cytokines and APOE expression has been reported in various tissues and model systems [116].