ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:As mesenchymal stem cells are commonly used as seed cells in studies of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, the regulatory mechanism of their biological characteristics is a current research focus. OBJECTIVE:To summarize the regulations of Wnt signaling pathway on proliferation, senescence and differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells. METHODS:PubMed database and CNKI database were retrieved by computer using the key words of“mesenchymal stem cells, Wnt signaling pathway, proliferation, senescence, differentiation”in Chinese and English, respectively, between 2002 and 2014. Final y, 44 articles were included in result analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Wnt signaling pathway is widely involved in the regulations of the biological characteristics of mesenchymal stem cells. Canonical Wnt signaling pathway reveals a bi-directional regulation effect on cellproliferation and osteogenic differentiation, and enhances senescence and neural differentiation, but inhibits adipogenic differentiation;non-canonical Wnt signaling pathway enhances senescence and osteogenic differentiation, and inhibits proliferation and adipogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells, but it takes no part in neural differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells. So the regulations of Wnt signaling pathway on the biological characteristics of mesenchymal stem cells can be used as the new therapeutic targets of bone tissue engineering, nerve injury repair, and so on.