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The failure of neuronal proliferation and differentiation is a major obstacle for neural repair and regeneration after traumatic central nervous system (CNS) injury. PTEN acts as an intrinsic brake on the neuronal cells, but its roles and mechanism still remain to be clarified. Herein, for the first time we confirmed that PTEN had a dual effect on the neuronal cells in vitro. Firstly, we found that PTEN knockdown significantly promoted cell proliferation and differentiation. Then, PTEN knockdown activated PI3K/Akt and Wnt/β-catenin pathways in vitro. Further evidence revealed that GSK3β as a key node involved in PTEN controlling cell proliferation and differentiation in PC12 cells. In addition, we identified that PTEN-GSK3β pathway modulated neuronal proliferation via β-catenin. Taken together, these results suggest that PTEN silencing enhances neuronal proliferation and differentiation by activating PI3K/Akt/GSK3β pathway that it may be a promising therapeutic approach for CNS injury., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The aim of this study is to identify rat nasal septum respiratory mucosa-derived mesenchyme stem cells (RM-MSCs) and to compare its neural lineage differentiation capacity with bone marrow-derived mesenchyme stem cells (BM-MSCs) after a short period of neural induction culture in vitro. The cell morphology was observed with light microscopy; cell proliferation was assessed by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT). The characteristics of the cells were evaluated with flow cytometry, immunofluorescence, real-time quantitative PCR (RT-PCR), and Western blotting. The results showed that rat nasal respiratory mucosa contains RM-MSCs that exhibited similar proliferation rate as BM-MSCs in vitro. Both RT-PCR and Western blotting analyses demonstrated that RM-MSCs showed higher expression of neural lineage markers than BM-MSCs after a short period of neural induction culture, and secreted higher level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. RM-MSCs were more amenable to differentiate into neural or glial cell after a short period of neural induction culture than BM-MSCs in vitro; and it could be considered as another optimal source of stem cells for cell-based therapy to neurological diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]