GFAP Antibodies & Proteins — Astrocyte Marker for Neuroscience Research

If you are staining brain tissue, GFAP is almost certainly in your panel. Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) is a class III intermediate filament protein that constitutes the principal cytoskeletal component of mature astrocytes in the central nervous system. For decades it has served as the definitive immunohistochemical marker for astrocyte identification — the antibody you reach for when you need to know whether a cell in a brain section is an astrocyte or something else.

More recently, GFAP has gained a second life as a blood-based biomarker for brain injury and neurodegeneration, measurable in serum and CSF. abinScience offers 13 anti-GFAP products across 7 distinct clones — including 2 VHH nanobodies — plus recombinant GFAP proteins for human and mouse research.

GFAP Beyond Tissue Staining: A Biofluid Biomarker

GFAP has moved from the histology lab to the clinical diagnostics conversation. When astrocytes are damaged — by trauma, ischemia, or neurodegenerative disease — GFAP is released into the cerebrospinal fluid and, in sufficient quantities, into peripheral blood. This has made serum GFAP one of the most actively studied fluid biomarkers in neuroscience:

Traumatic brain injury (TBI): Serum GFAP levels rise within hours of head injury and correlate with injury severity. In 2023, the first point-of-care blood test measuring GFAP (alongside UCH-L1) received FDA clearance for evaluating patients with suspected mild TBI — reducing unnecessary CT scans in emergency departments.

Alzheimer's disease: Plasma GFAP is emerging as a marker of reactive astrogliosis associated with amyloid pathology. Multiple studies have shown that plasma GFAP levels are elevated years before the onset of cognitive symptoms in individuals with brain amyloid accumulation, making it a potential screening biomarker for preclinical Alzheimer's.

Multiple sclerosis and gliomas: CSF GFAP levels reflect the extent of astrocyte damage in demyelinating diseases and are under investigation as prognostic markers in high-grade gliomas where GFAP expression patterns change with tumor grade.

Note: abinScience GFAP products are for research use only and are not intended for clinical diagnostic applications.

Available Products

Anti-GFAP Antibodies

GFAP Recombinant Proteins

Choosing the Right Anti-GFAP Clone

With 7 distinct clones available, the right choice depends on your application and tissue type:

Gene: GFAP  |  UniProt: P14136 (Human)  |  Molecular weight: ~50 kDa  |  Type: Class III intermediate filament  |  Expression: Astrocytes (CNS), enteric glia, Schwann cells (subset)

For research use only. Not intended for diagnostic or therapeutic use.