Abstract: Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder in central nervous system caused by the loss of midbrain dopaminergic neurons. At present, dopaminergic neurons differentiated both in vivo and in vitro from neural stem cells act as an important cell source for the cell-replacement therapy of Parkinson's disease. This paper reviewed the major molecular mechanism, signaling pathway and important environment factors involved in differentiation of dopaminergic neurons from neural stem cells, based on the research findings in recent 10 years.

Key words: Parkinson's disease, neural stem cells, dopaminergic neuron, differentiation mechanism, review