Abstract： AIM: To investigate the characteristics of APC-Cdh1 expression in the central nervous system. METHODS: Fresh frozen sections were prepared from the brain tissue of health adult male SD rats and the expression of Cdh1 was detected by immuno-histochemistry. The subtypes of Cdh1 positive cells were determined by double immunofluorescent labeling technique with Cdhl + NeuN or Cdh1 + GFAP antibody. Primary neurons and neural stem cells from the hippocampus of postnatal 24 h rat pups were cultured. Neurons were identified by NeuN immunocyto-chemical staining, neural stem cells were examined by Nestin immunocytochemical staining and their differentiation characteris-tics were identified by GFAP and MAP2 immunocytochemical staining. The mRNA of neuron and neural stem cells was extracted by Trizol method and the expression of Cdh1 and CDC20 was examined by quantitive real-time PCR. RESULTS: The immune-staining showed that Cdh1 was highly expressed in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus, which was mainly located in neurons. Compared with that in neural stem cells, the expression of Cdh1 mRNA significantly increased in neurons [(1.00±0.05) vs (2.10±0.07 ), P<0.05], but CDC20 mRNA was hardly expressed (1.00±0.04, 0.02±0.01, P<0.05). CONCLUSION: APC-Cdh1 is highly expressed in the brain tissue and it is mainly located in neurons. The expression of Cdh1 in neurons is higher than that in neural stem cells in vitro.