Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2013 Jan;229(2):221-31.
doi: 10.1002/path.4121.

Wnt signalling in kidney diseases: dual roles in renal injury and repair

Takahisa Kawakami  1 , Shuyu Ren, Jeremy S Duffield
Affiliations
Review

Wnt signalling in kidney diseases: dual roles in renal injury and repair

Takahisa Kawakami et al. J Pathol. 2013 Jan.

Abstract

Wnt signalling is a complex, highly conserved, cell-to-cell communication pathway in multicellular organisms, regulating cell fate, function and phenotype in development, and diseases, including neoplasia. Although the critical role of the Wnt pathway in nephrogenesis is well established, recent investigations have shown its involvement in many adult kidney diseases, including ischaemic kidney injury, glomerular diseases, diabetic nephropathy, interstitial fibrosis and cystic kidney diseases. Overall, activation of the Wnt pathway is deleterious to many chronic diseases of the kidney, contributing to the maintenance of cells in an activated state. In addition, the Wnt pathway is activated during repair and regeneration in animal models of acute ischaemic injury, a scenario that is frequently encountered in human acute kidney injury. This activation recapitulates features of nephrogenesis and appears to play an indispensable role in repair and regeneration in this acute setting. As tools are being developed to regulate the Wnt pathway intracellularly and at the cell surface, the Wnt pathway has become a potential avenue for urgently required novel therapeutics for treating human kidney diseases. In this review, we describe consensus models for major Wnt signalling cascades and then discuss their roles in kidney diseases.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources