Objective To study the effect of quercetin on gene expression in glucose-oxygen deprived astrocytes using large-scale oligo microarray technology.Methods Astrocytes were primarily cultured in vitro and divided into ischemia and hypoxia group and ischemia and hypoxia plus quercetin treatment(50 μmol/L)group; ischemia and hypoxia cells from these 2 groups were induced by anaerobic culture for 4 h,and then,the nutrient solutions were added into each group,respectively.Twenty-four h after that,cDNA microarray was employed to select the differentially expressed genes in the 2 groups,and these genes were confirmed by quantitative RT-PCR.Results The cDNA microarray indicated that the expressions of 180 genes had significant changes at the mRNA level between ischernia and hypoxia group and ischemia and hypoxia plus quercetin treatment group,of which 49 genes were up-regulated and 131 were down-regulated.One hundred and forty-eight differentially expressed genes were confirmed by RT-PCR,including 34 up-regulated genes and 114 down-regulated genes,which showed that 82.2％(148/180)genes that matched with the results of cDNA microarray.Conclusion Gene expression profiling by large-scale oligo microarray provides good understanding of the molecular mechanism of quercetin in glucose-oxygen deprived astrocytes,and laids the foundation for investigating the influence of quercetin and astrocytes in hypoxic-ischemic brain damage.