The neural development is controlled by a tight coordination among cell proliferation,survival, and differentiation.Before final differentiation, the proliferating neural progenitor cells exit from cell cycle to elicit novel program leading to a specialized cell type.The proneural bHLH transcription factors, including Neurogenins and NeuroD family, play critical roles in neural differentiation by activating a core set of neurogenesis-related targets to orchestrate neuronal cell cycle arresting, differentiation and migration.In addition to NeuroD, the anti-apoptotic protein Survivin/Birc5 is also required for the developing neural cells.Knockdown birc5a or-5b abrogated NPC maturation and induced severe apoptosis.However, the mechanism of this Birc5a-mediated neural cell differentiation still remains unclear.Here we demonstrated that neurod1/-d4 and birc5a act coordinately in CNS development.Depletion of neurod1/-d4 abrogated birc5a transcription and induced massive NPC apoptosis.Likewise, knockdown birc5a resulted in neurod1 and neurod4 repression and arrested CNS development.The repealed neurogenesis induced by neurod1/-d4 depletion were rescued partially by ectopic birc5a mRNAs, indicating that neurod1/-d4 and birc5a act coordinately on NPC differentiation.