[Research progress of key signaling pathways in osteoblast differentiation and bone formation regulation].

OBJECTIVE: To review the mechanism and research progress of signaling pathways which play key roles in the regulation of osteoblast differentiation and bone formation. METHODS: Recent articles about signaling pathways of osteoblast differentiation and bone formation were reviewed and comprehensively analyzed. RESULTS: At present, multiple signaling pathways have been found to be involved in the regulation of osteoblast differentiation and bone formation, among which bone morphogenetic protein-Smads, Wnt/β-catenin, Notch, Hedgehog, and fibroblast growth factor signaling pathways may play the most important roles. Not only each pathway has a complex regulatory mechanism itself, but also contacts and impacts with each other, thus they formed a more complicated and sophisticated regulatory network, and regulate together osteoblast differentiation and bone formation. However, the mechanisms in detail of those pathways are still not very clear, because the animal experiment techniques are not yet mature as well as the relevant clinical trials were carried out not too much. CONCLUSION: The complete molecular mechanism of osteoblast differentiation and bone formation should be further investigated, so as to lay a theory foundation for preventing and treating the common bone diseases in clinical which are involve in osteoblast differentiation and bone formation.